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SUNSHINE LIBRARY. 


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THE LITTLE CRUSADERS. 



^loybrA 

<^omdsJ/. Cro(6>e// &Co. 
z^Publisf]ers. 


V.- 



the library of 
CONGRESS, 
Two Copies Received 

JUl. 24 I90t 

Copyright ehtry 

iy, tqof 

CLASS ^XXc. Ns 

COPY a 


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• • • • • 






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c o» 


Copyright, 1901, 


By THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO. 


0l-l'8'5^7 


The Memory of a little child whose 
tired feet have travelled to the 
Jerusalem wherein rest the Little 
Crusaders of the story and to whom 
this hook first ivas read. 





CONTENI S 


CHAP. PAGE 

I. Stephen of Cloyes 1 

II. The Vision 17 

III. Pierre 31 

IV. In the Chateau 44 

V. The Olh Man of the Mountain 58 

VI. The Sieur Raoul 65 

VII. At St. Denys 77 

VIII. The Departure 87 

IX. Marseilles 104 

X. The Way 110 

XI. The Sailing of the Ships 121 

XII. What Happened to Alise r 128 

XIII. How Pierre Found Alise 139 

XIV. Pierre’s Father 148 

XV. The Little Crusaders 155 





THE LITTLE CRUSADERS. 


OHAPTEE I. 

STEPHEN OF CLOYES. 

It was on a spring afternoon of long ago that 
a group of little French peasant boys, busy in 
mischief, were startled by the sudden dash of a 
palfrey into their midst. 

“ Shame upon ye, children of Cloyes ! Have 
ye no hearts that ye do this wicked deed ? ’’ 

And down from the horse’s back there sprang 
a girl no older than the youngest of the group 
before her. 

She was clad in a gown of velvet, fashioned 
to cling close about her figure, and all bravely 
slashed with white, and embroidered in gold, 
cut square across the breast, and of a blue 
which gleamed green as doth the pea-fowl in 
the sunlight. Like a flower amid thistles she 


2 


THE LITTLE CRUSADERS. 


confronted the rough peasants, a high-born 
little accuser in a quaint cap which gave license 
to her hair to escape in golden curls over her 
neck and shoulders. Her eyes, even though 
emboldened by her scorn, were shy as bluets 
in spring-time, and her skin was soft and 
very white save where excitement had flushed 
it to the hue of the edges of the great white 
peonies which grow in the gardens. 

Shame upon ye ! ” she cried, and down 
went the tousled heads of the seven little cul- 
prits, while seven pairs of brown feet twisted 
and wiggled in the soft earth beneath them. 

Without further words, the little maid gath- 
ered the front of her gown in her hand, — for 
’twas the fashion to make dresses sweep about 
the feet, — and passing through the group made 
her way towards a strange object immediately 
before her, a great something which resembled 
a box, but whose front was made terrible with 
massive iron bars against whose cruel restraint 
a poor human flgure was angrily beating itself. 

It was the village mad cage, and behind the 
bars was old Andre gone mad with grief over 


STEPHEN OF CLOYES. 3 

the loss of seven brave sons who had died of 
a plague which once had devastated Cloyes. 
Long ragged gray hair, torn and uncombed as 
the mane of a beast from the forest, hung over 
the shoulders of the sack-like garment into 
which they had tied him, and when he turned 
his gaze upon the child who approached, she 
remembered the look in the eyes of a great 
stag at bay which she had once seen when the 
hunt was up and the hounds pressed hard 
upon it. 

“ Andre, good Andre ! ” She spoke in a 
voice as soft as an afternoon breeze in June, 
and fearlessly she approached close to the cage. 
“ Dost remember thy little mistress ? ^^^ay, she 
remembereth thee.” Her speech was gentle 
with the sympathy of a loving heart, and the 
poor maniac yielded enough to its charm to 
pause in his frenzy while she named over his 
sons, talking as if to one in his senses. The 
children who, before her arrival, had been pok- 
ing at Andre with sticks that they might goad 
him to fury and then have their laugh at his 
antics, slunk noiselessly away and scurried 


4 


THE LITTLE CRUSADERS. 


across the square to their homes in the little 
thatched houses of the streets surrounding the 
cage, and when their accuser turned from old 
Andre not one was in sight. 

With a satisfied nod of her pretty head she 
took a gourd cut in the form of a dipper, from 
its place near the cage and, filling it with 
water, she brought it to Andre, carefully pass- 
ing it through the bars of the cage. He drank 
deeply, and then soothed by unwonted kind- 
ness he grew quiet and, presently, forgetful of 
tormentors, he lifted his voice, and in full rich 
tones he chanted the Benedictus. In his other 
days he had sung in the church, and in his 
quiet moments the old words and tunes would 
return to his memory. 

The child, her face all moved by his singing, 
stood listening, one hand holding up her gown 
above one little foot. 

“ ’Tis the Lady Alise from the castle, good 
brother.” And old Francois, the wood-cutter, 
piling logs before the house of the maire, looked 
up and spoke to a stranger pilgrim who had 
paused to watch the child at the cage. 


STEPHEN OF CLOYES. 


5 


“ An angel they say she is, and well can I 
believe it.’’ And he nodded his old head until 
a lock of gray hair fell into his eyes and he 
had to push it back with a brawny, huge-fisted 
hand. 

The brother bowed in assent. He was a tall, 
broad-shouldered man with a fine, noble face, 
and a mouth which fitted firmly together when 
shut. In his eyes was a look of tenderness, 
and about his jaw and mouth were signs of 
strength. His dress was gray, for he was a 
follower of a certain rich young man, one 
Francis of Assisi, who had left wealth and 
home to espouse poverty and devote himself 
to the care of God’s poor, and who was then 
gaining disciples over all Christendom. 

Old Francois, seeing that the little maid 
was ready for her palfrey, and knew not how 
to mount it alone, started forward to help 
her. 

But before he had taken a half dozen steps 
there was another before him. 

A boy, so beautiful that Alise and the gray 
brother alike thought of the paintings of the 


6 


THE LITTLE CRUSADERS. 


angels in the churches, sprang from behind the 
cage and led the palfrey to a spot convenient 
for mounting. 

“ Ah ! ” cried the little lady, and her face 
broke into smiles, thou art the boy whom. on 
Black Crosses’ day I saw in the church at 
Chartres? But,” and her smiles vanished in 
quick concern, “ tell me — thou wert not one of 
them ? ” And she looked anxiously first at old 
Andre, and then into the face before her. 

“ No, demoiselle,” answered the boy, and he 
shrugged his shoulders with a look of con- 
tempt. “ I have naught to do with such as 
they.” 

Perhaps it was his look of scorn, or, per- 
chance, only the ever-moving tenderness of her 
heart which made Alise on the instant become 
the defender of those whom she had but shortly 
since reproved. 

“ It may be,” she said, “ they meant not to 
do so wickedly. Now that they are hurt by 
my words I grieve over their pain as I did over 
the grief of poor Andre.” 

The boy looked at her in wonder, then he 


STEPHEN OF CLOYES. 7 

shrugged his shoulders, not seeing how it were 
possible to be so soft at the heart. 

‘‘Trouble not thyself for such as they,” he 
said in scornful unconcern. “ Thy heart, lady, 
is too tender. Fear thee not ; they will return 
to their evil sport as readily as they left it.” 

As he stood by the horse, his hand resting on 
its mane, his golden hair glowed about his 
head like the halo of a saint. He carried him- 
self like a little prince, and yet Alise noticed 
that he wore the dress of a shepherd. At his 
belt was his wallet, and in one hand was a rough 
little peasant cap. 

“ And what mayst be thy name, boy ? ” And 
Alise gave him a smile which invited confi- 
dence. 

“ Stephen, my lady,” answered the lad. 

“ And thy home ? ” 

Following the direction of his hand, her eyes 
rested upon the thatched roof of a small house 
down the main street close to a meadow 
through whose quiet greenness fiowed the little 
river Loir, stealing along between the trees 
about the old castle, then winding like a cord 


8 


THE LITTLE CRUSADERS. 


of light through shallow willows and grassy 
banks. 

“ I watch sheep on yonder hills,” and he 
raised his hand towards the chalk cliffs beyond 
the river. “ To-day, my father hath detained 
me at home, and Pierre watched both flocks. 
Shortly must I join him and bring home my 
sheep.” 

“ And Pierre — is he thy brother ? ” 

Alise was very much interested. She was 
ever in the society of grown people, and this 
boy, this beautiful Stephen, she knew would 
make a fine playfellow. Perhaps her mother, 
— but no, in spite of his good looks and princely 
bearing, he was but a peasant, no better than 
old Andre, the maniac who once had been cow- 
herd at the castle. 

“ But no,” answered Stephen, shaking his 
golden halo, “ Pierre hath no father. He lives 
with Jacques, the head shepherd. He found 
him when he was a babe in the forest beyond 
Cloyes.” 

Alise was all attention. Here, indeed, was a 
story, and she loved stories above everything. 


STEPHEN OF CLOYES. 


9 


the more so when they told of real happen- 
ings. 

“ Tell me more,” she commanded, when to 
her disappointment a servitor from the chateau 
approached and bowed low before her. 

“ Thy gracious mother would that thou come 
at once,” and he lifted her to her horse. 

Waving her hand in farewell to Stephen, she 
vanished from the square. 

The boy stood silent for a moment, and then 
without so much as a glance or thought for poor 
Andre, or overworked Frangois, he bounded 
down the street and disappeared up the road 
leading beyond the hills. 

The Franciscan, who had paused to rest upon 
the logs, turned thoughtfully towards the 
wood-cutter. 

’Tis strange,” he said, “ the child in velvet 
and fine linen hath pity upon God’s poor, but 
the boy in the homespun hath thought but for 
himself.” 

‘‘ Stephen ? Thou meanest Stephen ? ” and 
Frangois raised up from his last log. “Yet 
he is a pious child. He prayeth by the hour.” 


10 


THE LITTLE CRUSADERS. 


“ May be,” answered the Franciscan, rising 
to depart, “ but God asketh of us more than 
prayers. ’Tis the heart which He needeth.” 

Then he went his way with a memory of a 
gentle child and a poor tortured maniac. Later 
on was he to see the girl in the homespun, the boy 
in the velvet, but he knew naught of that on 
that pleasant spring day as he journeyed from 
Cloyes saying over his Paternosters or Ave 
Marias. 

It was a jocund day. The sun was warming 
into life the laburnums and the hawthorns, the 
syringas and the olives. The sap was quick in 
the vines on the hills, and the tender shoots 
were swelling at the joints of the dull brown 
stems. Already in the grass were violets and 
early primroses. 

A few more weeks, a little warmer sun, and 
the world would be transformed by the ever 
new miracle of the spring awakening. Brother 
Sylvestre felt the gladness, and forgot his Pa- 
ternosters in his keen enjoyment of all about 
him. 

A cinnamon-colored body vibrated through 


STEPHEN OF CLOYES. 


11 


the air. ‘‘ ’Tis the thrush,” said Brother Syl- 
vestre. 

A note thrilled from over the field by the road. 

‘‘ ’Tis the lark,” said Brother Sylvestre, and 
thought of the old days when he and his brother 
had hunted for the nests in the fields and woods. 
He threw back his tonsured head and drank in 
the keen fresh air. 

At a turn in the road he saw a fiock of sheep 
descending the hill before him. Behind them 
came two little shepherds, waving aloft their 
crooks. Two dogs with eyes keen as those of 
man himself and yet soft with solicitude for the 
silly sheep, were circling about the fiocks in 
wide intelligent sweeps, pausing here, pausing 
there, to keep in the path some wilful wan- 
derer. 

The Franciscan, remembering the Shepherd 
of men, bowed his head and said a prayer. 
Passing the flocks,he came face to face with their 
shepherds. In one he recognized the Stephen 
of the afternoon. The other was a handsome, 
sturdy little fellow, with fine, frank, blue eyes 
and a noble-looking head, well covered with 


12 


THE LITTLE CRUSADERS. 


dark curls, and finely set upon neck and shoul- 
ders. When the Franciscan saw this face, his 
own grew troubled as if at some quick touch 
upon a sensitive memory. 

“ Thy names ? ” he inquired, for the boys had 
paused to do him reverence, the dogs mean- 
while guiding the sheep. 

“ Stephen of Cloyes,’’ answered the one of 
the golden hair. “ Pierre, the son of Jacques,” 
replied the other. 

The Franciscan looked this one clean 
through. 

“ Thou mayest be Pierre, the son of Jacques,” 
he said, “ but, by St. Martin of Tours, thou hast 
about thee the look of mine own one brother. 
And T like thee for it,” he added. 

Then he let them pass on. 

When the sheep were in their cotes for the 
night, the boys returned to the bridge to enjoy 
the evening. 

Leaning on the old guard wall, they watched 
the water flow from behind the trees about the 
distant castle, them ripple its way between the 
banks of tender spring grass, touching the un- 


STEPHEN OF CLOYES. 


13 


curling leaves of the water plants, an washing 
the long legs of a heron beyond the bridge. 
The evening sun began its work of flushing the 
waters rosy pink, and ever and anon a silver 
fish would flash upward, sometimes even leav- 
ing the waters to descend thither again with a 
bubbling splash in its rosiness. 

The air was faintly sweet with the perfume 
of the earliest of the fruit-tree blossoms, and 
in the lush grass of the meadow little leverets 
were leaping about in fearless sport. 

The birds were singing vespers, and Stephen, 
who loved beauty, and Pierre, who loved nature, 
were having their fill. 

Beyond them lay Cloyes, and smoke was 
curling blue from some of the houses. On the 
air were the evening sounds of cattle with milk- 
laden udders, longing to be generous with their 
gift, of fowls settling for the night, of wives 
calling their husbands, and little children at 
their play. 

“ Truly a right good deed was it to rescue 
old Andre,” cried Pierre, when Stephen told 
him of his afternoon’s adventure. 


14 


THE LITTLE CRUSADERS. 


‘‘ Thou, Pierre, shouldst have seen her,” an- 
swered Stephen, and described the velvet and 
curls. 

These two little shepherds had been friends 
always. “ Because they are so different,” said 
Jacques. 

Certainly they were as unlike in character as 
in the color of their locks. Stephen was a 
dreamer, and old for his years ; Pierre was a 
worker, and he loved play like a child. 

Stephen was wont to steal away to the church 
and dream of angels and plan glorious deeds 
for God’s kingdom. Pierre loved to wander 
over the hills, to lie in the long grass when the 
summer sun was upon it, or to track the rabbit 
to its burrow, the bird to its nest. 

Stephen knew the name and deed of every 
saint, but Pierre knew the birds, and when he 
went deep in the forest, sometimes the dun 
deer, gathered in herds in their secret places, 
would let him walk freely among them. 

Stephen had a voice as sweet as the skylark 
of far-away England, and when, in the church, 
he would tune his notes to the words of the 


STEPHEN OF CLOYES. 


15 


Credo or the Gloria, the old people of Cloyes 
would close their eyes and remember the angels 
who sang above Bethlehem. But Pierre could 
whistle a merry tune, and he knew the notes 
of the birds of the wood, and of the birds of 
the fields, and he had a trick of winning the 
loves of the young things about pasture or 
forest. 

Stephen longed for glorious deeds, but Pierre 
wanted a falcon, — a haggard of the rock,— that 
he might mew and man it, and carry it on his 
wrist, and try it on the banks of the river 
where ofttimes came the heron. 

“ If I could but find my father,” he said that 
evening to Stephen, “ then I, too, could dress in 
velvet and have a falcon on my wrist and seek 
the quarry as doth thy little lady of the castle.” 
And he gazed at the heron with the eye of a 
would-be sportsman. 

But .Stephen smiled loftily. “ I desire not 
such things, Pierre,” he said. “ I long to be a 
crusader, and win the tomb of our Lord.” 

Tis not often that boys’ wishes come true, 
but Stephen of Cloyes had not long to wait for 


16 THE LITTLE CRUSADERS. 

his. The fulfilment of it came to pass in so 
strange a fashion that even in the history of 
those far-off days there is nothing stranger, 
nor in any other history is there anything like 
it. 


CHAPTER II. 


THE VISION OF STEPHEN. 

It happened one evening, shortly after the 
afternoon when the Lady Alise talked with 
Stephen, that old Mengette, wife of Frangois 
the woodcutter, leading homeward her goat 
for its bedtime milking, was startled by a 
sound of hurrying feet. Looking up, she caught 
sight of Shepherd Stephen dashing towards 
the village followed by a line of white dust 
raised by his hurrying feet. In his hand was 
a roll of parchment, a most uncommon pos- 
session for a peasant. 

Mengette called his name, but unheeding, or 
perhaps not hearing, the boy fled on so fast 
that Mengette turned hastily to see if aught 
pursued him. 

All she saw was the dust at his heels. A 
little later, feeling that something was astir in 

2 17 


18 


THE LITTLE CRUSADERS. 


the village, she sought a spot from which 
she could command a distant view of the square. 
Standing there with arms akimbo, her fat old 
face keen with curiosity, she presently realized 
that everybody in Cloyes was hastening to- 
wards the heap of logs her husband had piled 
in front of the house of the maire. 

She hurried back to her goat. “Ah, my 
pretty one,” she said, as if talking to a child, 
“ thou must abide alone until thy mistress 
seeth what ’tis ail about.” And she ungirded 
her red woolen skirt from about her ample 
waist where, for convenience’ sake, she had 
tucked it when working. Up the street she 
went with much the gait of one of her own fat 
ducks. 

“ The Holy Saints ! ” she cried when her 
small black eyes caught sight of the square. 
It was filled to overflowing. Click clack, click 
clack went the feet on the stones, while flashing 
to and fro were red jackets, and gay woolen 
skirts. 

She saw Henri the blacksmith, Durand, 
Jacques the shepherd, Antoine, her own 


THE VISION OF STEPHEN. 19 

Francois, the maire himself ; everybody was 
there. Suddenly she felt a jostle at her elbow 
and heard a voice at her ear. 

“Why, in the name of all the saints, are 
these men not about their work ? Lazy, good 
for nothing things that they are.” 

It was Henriette, the village scold, who in 
russet gown, red woolen jacket, and white coif 
was expressing opinions in a high rasping voice 
as she elbowed, right and left in an effort to 
push towards the front. 

“ For the love of Our Lady ” 

It was blind Matilde groping with out- 
stretched hands, her ears eager to know what 
was happening. 

“ As for me, what can ye expect ? A 
woman with twelve children never hath chance 
to hear anything.” 

And Ernestine, wife of Durand, the black- 
haired man close to the maire, babies clinging 
to her skirts, steered herself bravely through 
the crowd. 

Andre, too, was doing his part to add to the 
hubbub. First, he would rush about his cage. 


20 


THE LITTLE CRUSADERS. 


piercing the air with piteous yells, then he 
would raise his full voice in song or hymn. 

In and out the crowd ran the dogs of Cloyes, 
a sharp bark now and then telling of their 
presence. And children ! They were there in 
dozens and of all ages. 

Above the noise, Mengette heard the voice of 
her husband. 

‘‘ I tell ye, people of Cloyes, I tell ye the whole 
thing is nonsense. ’Twas some priest ” 

“ No ! no ! ” cried a dozen voices. “ Let the 
boy speak. We would hear Stephen.” 

And then Mengette marveled at the sudden 
hush which fell on the crowd when a boy’s 
voice, sweet and clear, rang out on the evening 
air. 

It was Stephen and he stood in dark out- 
line against the rosiness of the evening sky, 
high on the pile of logs before the house of the 
maire. Seated on these same logs was old 
Jacques’ Pierre, and his little legs were dangling 
down over the tree trunks, and on his face was 
a look which told the story of his having heard 
things which had puzzled and startled him. 


THE VISION OF STEPHEN. 21 

“No,” cried Stephen, and his golden hair 
seemed to glow about his lovely face, “ no, 
good Fran9ois, I speak the truth,” and he 
threw out his hands as if imploring the crowd 
to believe him. “ I speak no nonsense, but the 
truth. He who this day came to me on yonder 
hills wore the dress of a shepherd, and his face 
was true, and had ye seen him, ye, too, would 
believe.” 

Stephen shook back the halo about his head, 
and in his eyes there came a look as of one 
who sees far away and beyond what is just 
before him. 

“ He came to me as I sat on the grass, and I 
tell ye true when I say that I saw not when 
he came, nor when he went. He was there, 
and he was not there, and that is the truth of it. 
He besought me for food, and sat with me, and 
ate what my mother had placed in my wallet. 
And he told me of the Holy Land, and of the 
death of our Lord, and of His tomb, and of the 
dishonor which the Infidels do it, and of the 
sufferings of the pilgrims. All this, and much 
more fell from his lips, but most of the tortures 


22 


THE LITTLE CRUSADERS. 


which the Infidels lay on the pilgrims who 
seek to honor our Lord at Ilis tomb. Then, 
when mine eyes were misty with tears at the 
thought of their pain, on a sudden, he rose, and 
yes, Fran9ois, yes, he told me that he was our 
Lord Jesus Christ, Himself, come down in a 
vision to command me, Stephen the shepherd, 
to raise an army of children and lead forth a 
new crusade to rescue Jerusalem and restore 
the tomb to Christendom ! ’’ 

The boy’s voice rang out with an accent of 
truth. He believed his vision. Mengette saw 
that. But our Lord J esus Christ ! It was a 
strange day, and people believed many marvels 
but 

“ Bah ! ” cried Francois, “ ’twas only a crafty 
priest ! ” 

Certainly, the story exceeded anything the 
people of Cloyes had been asked to believe in 
even their most believing moments. 

A crusade of children ! 

How Mengette, and Henriette, and Jacques, * 
and all the rest of them, knew about the cru- 
sades. 


THE VISION OF STEPHEN. 23 

The Middle Ages were full of them. Five 
had gone forth, and the Pope had ordered a 
sixth. But, certainly, these had naught to do 
with children. Many a warrior, wearing his 
cross, had Mengette seen go forth to battle 
against the Saracens. Her grandfather had 
told her of Peter the Hermit, the pious monk 
who first had persuaded Europe to rise and 
make war upon the Infidels who then possessed 
Jerusalem. She knew that these crusades had 
been led by kings and emperors, — Pichard of 
England had passed by Cloyes itself — and he 
was the lion of crusaders. 

She knew that Godfrey of Bouillon had 
entered Jerusalem in triumph, and, that after 
his victories, the Christians had held the land 
for nearly a century, but she knew, too, of the 
fearful bloodshed, and the cruel quarrels, and 
the tortured pilgrims, and, therefore, she knew 
that crusades were no work for children. 

“ We will march through France.’’ Again 
she lent ear to Stephen. “ And the sea shall 
dry before our path, and in triumph the chil- 
dren shall enter Jerusalem.” 


24 


THE LITTLE CRUSADERS. 


“ ‘ Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings/ ” 
repeated the boy, “ ‘ hast thou ordained strength, 
because of thine enemies, that thou mightest 
still the enemy and the avenger.’ ” 

This was the text which Stephen’s strange 
visitor had taught him. “ Innocence,” he 
cried, “ shall conquer where strong men have 
failed. Our Lord hath promised ! ” 

“ Out upon thee for such talk,” came the rude 
voice of Frangois, now thoroughly aroused to 
anger. “ Shall babies bring the sword ? Thy 
pilgrim, my little Stephen, was but some crafty 
priest who knew full well of thy piety, and 
means to use thee to his end. Our Lord,” and 
he raised his old eyes with meek reverence to- 
wards the evening sky, “ dwelleth above, and 
we shall see Him only at the last day.” 

But Stephen insisted. 

“ It* was our Lord,” he said, and he threw 
back his head and looked Frangois bravely in 
the face, never heeding the people who were 
arguing and protesting, some shocked, some 
ready to believe, others puzzled, some clamor- 
ous, a few already under the spell. 


THE VISION OF STEPHEN. 25 

“ For, when he had made an end of speaking, 
in a moment, when I turned to look after my 
sheep, he vanished. Then, behold. He gave 
me this ! ” 

He held out a roll of parchment. “ ’Tis a 
letter to the king,” he said. “ And in it, our 
Lord commandeth him, in the name of God 
and our Lady, to succor and not hinder the 
crusade of the children.” 

Hot one in the crowd could read or write. 
With awe and reverence they gazed upon the 
sacred parchment. In their ignorance they 
were ready to believe anything, especially when 
it had to do with religion. 

“ To-morrow,” said the maire, and he lifted 
a fat hand of authority, “ we will take the boy 
and his letter to messire the cure, and he shall 
settle the matter of the vision.” 

So the next day they took Stephen to the 
cure. He was a saintly old man with mild blue 
eyes and a face which spoke of much fasting 
and praying. 

His sermons were always about visions and 
signs ; and, so when Stephen told his story, the 


26 


THE LITTLE CRUSADERS. 


old man clasped his hands with the finger-tips 
pressed hard upon the knuckles, until the violet 
veins stood high up from the wrinkled skin. 

“ Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart 
in peace,” he said devoutly, and bent his ton- 
sured head in thanksgiving that a vision had 
come to honor poor Cloyes. 

“ Did not our Lord appear to the saints ? ” 
he asked, gazing about on the group of people 
who knew not how to answer him if they 
would, he being a priest, and they ignorant 
peasants. Then he raised the wrinkled old 
hands which had baptized all the children of 
Cloyes, and gave Stephen his blessing, and bade 
him Godspeed with the crusade of the chil- 
dren. 

From that day naught else was discussed in 
Cloyes. 

Tell us of the crusades,” the children would 
entreat. “ Stephen doth say that all who wear 
the cross and follow him to Jerusalem, shall 
have their sins forgiven them on earth and 
win shining crowns in Heaven.” 

Old Gaston, who once had been a lusty black- 


THE VISION OF STEPHEN. 


27 


smith at Tours, had the most to tell. He was 
well-nigh a hundred, and had heard the great 
Bernard preach the second crusade at Yezelai. 
In his quavering voice he told the little group 
of children what it meant to become a crusader. 
He described the preaching of Peter the Her- 
mit as it had been told him as a child, and he 
pictured for them Godfrey entering Jerusalem 
in triumph, but refusing to wear a crown of 
gold in that city where his master had worn 
the one of thorns. 

But, above all, he told how Queen Eleanora 
of Aquitaine, the mother of Bichard the Lion- 
Hearted of England, but then the wife of the 
king of France, had rushed forward at the 
preaching of the great Bernard and had begged 
for the cross that she, though a queen and a 
woman, might become a crusader, and share 
the hardships of the king and his army on 
their journey to Palestine. 

It was this tale which stirred up the girls. 

“ And may we not go, too, on the crusade ? ” 
they asked, and flocked about Stephen. Only 
Erangois, the wood-cutter, kept his head. 


28 THE LITTLE CRUSADERS. 

% 

He was a queer-looking man whose thick 
gray hair was swept back from a face tanned 
and browned by a life in the air ; and his nose 
was curved like the beak of an eagle, and his 
eyes seemed to look things clean through to the 
truth. 

“ I tell ye, people of Cloyes,” he would say, 
“ ye had better lock up your children, or, by 
St. Martin of Tours, ye will live to repent ye of 
your folly. Take sticks to them if need be,” 
he would add, thumping hard one fist upon the 
other and furrowing deep his brow. 

He was a man of imagination, — a man who 
though a cutter of trees never had brought 
himself to the state of not quivering in sym- 
pathy when he heard the shrieking cry of the 
falling tree — and he could picture to himself 
the woes of a children’s crusade. 

But no one heeded him. 

“ Out upon thee for an old croaker ! Bah ! ” 
they said. ‘‘ Have we not the letter to prove 
the vision ? ” 

So on went the madness. 

Presently, processions began to be formed. 


THE VISION OF STEPHEN. 


29 


Children went up and down the lanes waving 
banners and singing the stirring songs of the 
old crusaders, and they were so much occupied 
with themselves and their crusading that they 
trampled down the flowers which each spring 
they had loved to gather, and they sang so 
loud that the birds took offense and flew off to 
quiet spots without rivals. 

In the midst of it all, Stephen, at the com- 
mand of the cure, bade farewell to Cloyes and 
started to find the king that he might show 
him the letter. It was early morning when he 
left Cloyes, and the air was sweet with the 
perfume of the fruit blooms. The meadows 
were dotted with flowers, and bees and birds 
were a-buzz and a-twitter. Hope was high 
with nature, and Stephen’s ardent heart was 
beating high with the belief in his vision. He 
passed along with so far-off a look in his eyes 
that he saw nothing of the life about him, the 
birds at work with straws and moss, the bees 
astir in the flowers, nor did he pause when he 
heard a sharp cry of pain from the bushes 
about the castle. 


30 


THE LITTLE CRUSADERS. 


“Only some bird which hath escaped the 
fowler or the peregrine/’ he thought with easy 
unconcern. 

Again came the sound, and then there was 
a breaking through of bushes, and when Ste- 
phen looked back he saw the little Lady Alise, 
clad all in white, stoop and raise a dove to her 
breast. Her gentle hands soothed it, and her 
lips cooed to it, while red drops from its wounded 
breast fell unheeded on the whiteness of her 
gown. 

It was a pretty sight, but Stephen had his 
mind upon crusading and went on his way, 
leaving Alise to her bird, for to pause meant to 
lose time in finding the king. 


CHAPTEK III. 


PIEEKE. 

PiEREE lived with old Jacques and Marie, his 
wife, in a small thatched cottage on the edge 
of a meadow, which sloped towards the Loir. 
From its doorway could be seen the gentle 
little river, the vine-clad hills beyond, and the 
castle and its trees. It was a pleasant spot 
and Pierre was very happy. He had his dog 
and a tame crow, and Jacques and Marie loved 
him as their own child. 

In the summer Pierre was wont to roam 
the meadows, helping Marie gather simples; 
in the winter, nothing pleased him more than 
to sit on a stool and hearken while his foster 
father told tales of life when he was a boy. 
When the time for the blue flowers of the flax 
was past, he would help Marie gather the 
plants and bear them into the house, and much 
he loved to hear the buzz and whir of the 

31 


32 THE LITTLE CRUSADERS. 

wheel when, a little later, the busy housewife 
would begin the spinning of the fibers into the 
linen to store away for tunics or gowns. In 
its season he would bring in the lavender to 
lay in the linen, and fresh sprigs of mint from 
the brook near the house. 

In front of the cottage was a stone bench 
and around about it was a garden riotous with 
fiowers. There blossomed the ground pepper 
with its fragrant smell, and early spring prim- 
roses, and violets, and a thorny bush on whose 
spiky limbs the throstle would pour forth its 
joy, and the old-time citronelle, and sage, and 
the fiaunting 'poppies, and lilies sweet as the 
white cheeks of a babe. 

On warm evenings Marie and Jacques would 
sit on the bench, and the old woman would lay 
her toil-worn hand in his great broad palm, and, 
with her old head on his shoulder, the two 
would listen to the nightingale wooing the 
night, and remember the days when as lovers 
they sat on this same hard bench. 

Pierre loved this bench, too, and on summer 
days before he grew old enough to keep the 


PIERRE. 


33 


sheep on the hills, he would lie at full length on 
the warm stones and watch the white clouds 
telling wonderful stories as they passed over 
the blue of the sky. 

When shearing time came, he was Jacques’ 
cheerful little helper, and gathering his arms 
full of the soft masses of wool would heap them 
in a pile ready to be borne to the store place. 

The greater part of his time, however, was 
spent on the hill with Stephen. 

In the evenings, when the sheep were safe 
for the night, he and Mere Marie and Pere 
Jacques would sit together in the living-room 
of their small house. Marie would turn her 
wheel, and the old man would teach Pierre the 
Our Father and the I Believe, which every 
child was required to know before he might 
partake of the communion. 

The room was poor, and its floor was of 
hard white earth, without carpet or covering, 
and in its center in winter burned a fire whose 
smoke ascended through a hole in the roof. 
But it was home, and Pierre loved the rough 
little wooden statue of the Virgin in its corner 
3 


34 


THE LITTLE CRUSADERS. 


and much it pleased his ears to hear the cheer- 
ful hum of the wheel as Marie busied himself 
with her spinning. From the black rafters 
hung bundles of simples and herbs which 
smelled sweet in the drying. 

There was no better story-teller in Cloyes 
than old Jacques, and at Pierre’s pleading he 
would gladly relax his zeal and become story- 
teller in place of teacher. He was a hale old 
man with mild eyes of gentle blue and 
straight white hair thrown back from his fore- 
head, a face deep furrowed, and strong in the 
line of the nose, and with a mouth which 
smiled kindly at children. 

Sitting at his feet, his small hands caressing 
the old man’s knee, Pierre heard many a tale 
of knight and crusader. And he heard, too, of 
his being found in the forest when only a babe. 

‘‘In those days,” the old man would begin, 
“ the forests were much infested by thieves and 
robbers, and perilous, indeed, it was to travel 
alone, unless, little one, a man were poor, for 
poverty, Pierre, is the one thing which exciteth 
no envy. It happened in the year that I found 


PIERRE. 


35 


thee, that God took our own little babe, a boy 
like to thee.” 

“ And named Pierre too,” put in the small 
listener, hitching his stool closer to his father, 
and turning up a bright little face. 

“ Yes, we gave thee his name, not knowing 
thine own, and having no assurance that thou 
hadst been baptized. He was a goodly child, 
fair and plump, and one not likely to fall into 
ailments. But, nevertheless, he did fall ill, — 
upon St. Mark’s Hay. I remember full well 
that it was St. Mark’s, and not St. Gregory’s, 
as Marie will have it, because I saw Messire 
the good cure on his road to Chartres for the 
Black Cross Day mass. Marie didst doctor the 
babe with many herbs, but ’twas in vain. By 
nightfall all was over. ’Twas a sad year — a 
sad year. Messire the good cure came near to 
death, and Marie’s father ” 

“But, Pere Jacques,” interrupted Pierre, 
“ am I not to hear of how thou didst find me 
in the woods ? ” 

“ Thou art right,” and Mere Marie would 
smile from her wheel. “ When thy father would 


36 


THE LITTLE CRUSADERS. 


tell a thing he loseth himself in a wilderness of 
words as doth a bird in the net of a fowler.” 

But Jacques would laugh and proceed in the 
telling of his story, for he and Mere Marie un- 
derstood each other, and Pierre knew naught 
of bickering. 

“I was passing through the woods, mon 
enfant, and had come to a lonely spot, a deep 
quiet place where the moss was thick and 
green, and soft to the hand, and the leaves 
above the path were thick like a roof, and 
through it ran a brook, and its babble over 
the fallen leaves of its bed seemed to make the 
stillness but deeper. Wild things, knowing 
naught of man and his cruel sports, walked 
fearlessly about, or bathed in the clear water of 
the spring from whence started the brook. As 
I journeyed along, on mine ears there fell a 
sound of screams, and callings for help, and 
prayers for mercy. Then came a clash of 
swords, the cry of a babe, groans, and the break- 
ing through of bushes. As I, seizing fast my 
cudgel, sprang through the trees, two varlets, 
gaily dressed and streaming with blood, dashed 


PIERRE. 


37 


through the brush and ran as if pursued by the 
Black Plague itself. Unmindful of me, away 
they dashed. I hastened towards the sound of 
commotion, and there beheld I three great ruf- 
fians, like hungry vultures over a lamb, hang- 
ing above a fair lady and her babe. In their 
hands were swords and their garments reeked 
with blood. I sprang forward dealing fearful 
blows and calling, ‘ Nicholas ! Jean ! Andre ! ’ 
in the pretense that I was but one of many. 
Taking fright the robbers made off, but not be- 
fore they had dealt the lady the blow of death, 
and robbed her of many of her jewels and all of 
her gold. I lifted her from the ground and bore 
her to the spring. I bathed her poor face and 
staunched her wounds, but ’twas all in vain. 
Each moment brought her nearer to her 
end. 

“ I placed thee in her arms. A smile, like that 
of Our Lady in the picture at Chartres, lighted 
up her face. 

“ ‘ Bear — thou — the babe — to his father,’ she 
said, and her breath came in gasps, and her 
voice in a faint whisper. 


38 


THE LITTLE CRUSADERS. 


“ Before I could learn aught of thy father, 
little one, her sweet voice died into silence, and 
I lifted thee, little orphan, from the arms of 
thy mother, a gentle dove slain by the cruel 
hawks. Then brought I thee to good Haviette 
Komee on the edge of the village, Marie being 
gone on a journey to Tours. We buried thy 
sweet dead mother, but of thy father we 
found not a trace.” 

“ Kor will we,” put in Marie stopping her 
wheel and rubbing her cheek with one 
hand. 

“ Well dost thou know, little Pierre, that the 
good cure hath ddne his best to find thy father, 
but in vain. How can we find a man of whom 
we know not so much as his name ? ” 

“ The jewels and the clothes,” put in Pere 
Jacques. 

“ Hay, nay, my good man, put not false 
hopes into the heart of our boy. He dreameth 
over much now. He hath the habit of Ste- 
phen. But no, my little Pierre,” and she rose 
from the wheel and, walking towards the 
child, put her hand on his cheek and drew the 


PIERRE. 


39 


little head against her knee, — the small cheek 
pressed itself close against her hand, for Marie 
was the same as his mother, — “ make thyself 
happy with things which are, — that is true 
wisdom ; leave the rest to the good God, — that 
is thy duty.” 

But presently Pierre would begin again. 

“ Pere Jacques, tell how thou broughtest 
me to the hamlet.” 

“ I boVe thee in my arms, and ‘ Marie,’ I said, 
‘ God hath sent thee this babe. He hath taken 
away, and now He giveth.’ At first her heart, 
aching for its own little one, cried out against 
another in its place, but thy smile banished 
her grief, and her heart growing warm towards 
thee, she said, ‘ If the clothes of mine own 
child fit the stranger, then, indeed, shall I know 
it to be the gift of God, and I will keep it for 
mine own.’ And the clothes fitted thee as if 
they had been measured upon thee, and Marie, 
seeing thee to be a gift of the good God, 
brought thee up as her own. And thou art a 
good boy, and may we never regret it.” 

Then would old Jacques stroke the boy’s 


40 


THE LITTLE CRUSADERS. 


hair, and Marie kiss him, and both smile at 
eath other as if to say, 

“ He is ours ; and proud, indeed, are we to 
own him.” 

But, good wife,” Jacques presently would 
say, “ the boy’s father is, doubtless, a grand 
seigneur, and Pierre may become a mighty lord 
and leave us.” 

‘‘ Never,” Pierre would cry, jumping up, and 
throwing back his shoulders, and putting on an 
air so exactly like a grown man that Marie, to 
hide her smile, was forced to look close at a 
spot on her kirtle. ‘‘ By the good blood in my 
veins,” — Pierre had once heard the oath of 
a knight, and it pleased him to speak in this 
fashion, since it sounded brave and well-born, — 
“never will I become a dastard. Ye are 
father and mother to me forever.” 

Nevertheless, in spite of this brave talk, 
Pierre thought much of this father whom he 
never had seen, and he became to the boy a 
knight so brave and so splendid that there was 
none in France like to him, save only the King 
himself. 


PIERRE. 


41 


Once he persuaded Mere Marie to show him 
the jewels and clothes, and she, to please the 
lad and because, moreover, it was his own, per- 
mitted him to wear about his neck a chain they 
had taken from that of his mother. 

He would lie at night in his little bed of 
straw and dream of all the things he would do 
when he found his father; how stout Marie 
was to have tunics of the finest cloth all over 
with gold, stars and crescents, rich girdles with 
buckles of precious stones, mantles embroidered, 
while good old Pere Jacques was to go forth in 
tunics of cloth of gold and full-sleeved dalma- 
tics like a king, and over all was the glitter of 
gold and silver and shining gems. 

When Stephen talked of the crusade Pierre’s 
heart responded in wild excitement. 

Then he remembered Mere Marie and Pere 
Jacques and shook his head. 

But Stephen talked a vast deal about the for- 
saking of father and mother for the sake of 
Christ, and he told him of how, perchance, he 
might discover his real father, and he dropped 
a hint here, and a promise there, until Pierre 


42 


THE LITTLE CRUSADERS. 


began to tell himself that it was his duty to 
God to become a crusader and follow Stephen. 
One thing, however, troubled him. It was 
that he felt so shamefaced about going. If it 
were the will of God, he wondered wh}^ he 
felt so uncomfortable in the doing of it. 

He wanted to go. 

What boy of Cloyes did not when the banners 
were flying and the songs calling to the march ? 
It was like being a knight and a man, and 
serving God in grown-up fashion. 

When flrst he prattled of it, Marie silenced 
him. 

“ A crusade, little one,” she said, “ is against 
Satan and sin, and beware lest thou follow him 
for thy leader.” 

Dull, indeed, was such talk in the face of 
Stephen with his visions and his banners and 
his promises of glory, and, therefore, when the 
children at length left Cloyes to join Stephen 
at Yendome, Pierre marched at the head of 
one of the processions. 

“ The children are all bewitched,” said old 
Frangois, coming to comfort Marie. How that 


PIERRE. 


43 


their children were gone, the parents no longer 
called the wood-cutter a croaker. But Marie 
would not be comforted. 

Day after day the tears wet her cheeks as she 
sat at her wheel. Pierre’s dog, the one which 
guarded his flock, would come wistfully into 
the room and wander here and there smelling 
and whining. 

“ The little one thought that he was right,” 
said old Jacques. “The madness hath seized 
all the children.” 

The days slowly followed the days, and the 
old people of Cloyes grew very quiet, and 
grieved away their hours, for in the whole 
hamlet there was not left a child to cheer them 
with its laughter, or to make them young with 
its prattle. 


CHAPTEE lY. 


IN THE CHATEAU. 

Safe within the great stone walls of the old 
chateau, Alise heard naught of the happenings 
at Cloyes. 

Whenever she found herself thinking of Ste- 
phen, she wished that so beautiful a boy were 
not a poor peasant. She thought of miserable 
Cloyes and its poor houses and their want of 
all which made her own life so pleasant. 

“ I wonder,” she asked herself, “ if he would 
like to see our great hall and the armor on its 
walls, and to sit at the great table ? Per- 
chance he would like to ride my palfrey, or 
hunt with my falcon, — but no, Frangois hath 
said that he is a pious child. I know what he 
would like.” 

And she climbed up the spiral stairs to the 
great room above and stood before a statue of 
44 


IN THE CHATEAU. 45 

Our Lady — one which her father in his travels 
had purchased in Italy. 

“ Stephen, I know full well, would love to 
gaze upon this, and much do I wish that I had 
him for a playfellow. Ma Mere and the rest 
I love, but 1 would there were children to talk 
with.” 

But Alise was not given to longings of an 
idle sort. All her life love had filled her heart 
to overflowing, and all those about her re- 
sponded to the love she gave. 

She knew the troubles of each servitor or 
maiden about the castle, and it kept her busy 
lending an ear to even the grumblers. The 
poor fool who amused the retainers with his 
jests found his little mistress a friend in his 
moments of seriousness. Into her ear he 
poured the story of the mother who had loved 
him, and of the father who had gained gold 
through the misfortune of his poor misshapen 
son. 

Sometimes it troubled her mother, the Lady 
Bertrade, that Alise was so tender-hearted, for 
well she knew that it meant much suffering. 


46 


THE LITTLE CRUSADERS. 


Then she put away the selfish thought and 
thanked God that her child was as she was. 

She herself was very gentle. Alise thought 
her the most beautiful mother in all France. 
She was tall, and stately, and her skin was soft 
and white like Alise’s, but her hair was dark, 
and it waved about her brows, and hjer eyes 
were soft and brown and her lips ever ready 
to frame excuses for the shortcomings of 
others. 

Alise was blonde like her father, and she was 
so fair and her hair so golden that her very 
look seemed to suggest the gentleness of love 
itself. The tenderness of her heart had a charm 
as subtile as the scent of some sweet-smelling 
lily. It seemed to steal into the very air itself, 
and before people quite understood what had 
happened to them, they, too, were pleasant and 
smiling, thinking gentle thoughts and saying 
loving words. 

“ Thou hast the gift of gifts,” her mother 
once told her. “ Keep loving and tender thy 
heart, mon enfant, and thou shalt do thine own 
work in the world.” 


IN THE CHATEAU. 


47 


Alise wondered what her mother meant, 
but too many things came to pass in the 
castle for her to lose time by thinking about 
herself. 

For one thing, there were the merchants, 
ever more numerous and more heavy laden as 
the crusades made possible the bringing west- 
ward of the treasures of the East. They wore 
long peaked beards and pointed caps, and when 
they opened their packs there were costly furs, 
embroidered cushious, curtains of purple dye, 
pavilions worked with gold, banners of cloth 
of gold, showy costumes, the rare tissues of 
Damascus, glassware from Tyre, silk stuffs from 
Mosul or Alexandria. 

Then there were the pilgrims, and the friars 
who sought shelter for the night, but best of 
all there were the trouveres. When one of 
these wandering minstrels came the whole 
castle rejoiced, for, at the magic sound of the 
singer’s lute, its every-day dulness would 
vanish as surely as the winter’s snow yieldeth 
to the sun of spring. Then the retainers would 
gather in the hall. If ’twere winter the great 


48 


THE LITTLE CRUSADERS. 


fire would blaze in the center, its smoke ascend- 
ing through a funnel-shaped opening in the 
ceiling. 

The Lady Bertrade would mount the carved 
chair of state on the dais, and Alise, all pretty 
in some soft gown, would steal after her, and 
would sit on a stool at her feet, and cuddle her- 
self up against her knee in the softness of her 
velvet robe. The Lady Bertrade’s white hand 
would steal to the child’s curls, or to the soft 
curve of her cheek, and there they would sit in 
listening contentment, as the minstrel, touch- 
ing his lute, would begin his tale of ad- 
venture. 

In the hall was a great wax taper divided 
into notches. When the flame traveled so far 
as a notch, a string would burn and let fall 
with a crash a ball in the basin below and an 
hour would be gone. When a certain ball 
which marked the half hour before midnight 
would clang in the basin, the minstrel would 
cease story or song, the company would rise, 
the night torches be brought, and all would 
to bed. 


IN THE CHATEAU. 


49 


In her whole life, Alise had been beyond 
Cloyes but once. It was then that she had 
gone with her mother to Chartres and had 
seen Stephen. 

It was on Black Crosses’ Day and had come 
to pass in this fashion. On the festival of St. 
Mark there was, in those ancient days, a cus- 
tom of saying the Greater Litany in memory of 
those who had died while gone on a pilgrimage 
to Palestine. In the churches the altars were 
draped in black, and the people and priests 
went through the streets chanting prayers and 
carrying crosses hung with mourning. From 
this custom the day came to be known as 
“ Black Crosses’ Day.” 

Lady Bertrade had taken Alise thither that 
she might offer prayers for her father who had 
died on the way to Jerusalem. Certainly, the 
good Father Sebastian had none in his congre- 
gation who lent a more attentive ear than little 
Alise d’Estivet of Cloyes. 

Her face glowed with indignation when he 
described the sufferings of the pilgrims, and 
she hung her head in shame for Christendom 
4 


50 THE LITTLE CRUSADERS. 

when the good cur6 declared that God would 
turn His face away from His people if these 
outrages were permitted to continue. He 
looked so fierce, and shook his finger with such 
vehemence in the faces before him that many 
then and there made vows in their hearts to 
join in the labors of the next Holy War. 
When he described the fearful cruelties which 
had been suffered by the pilgrims the church 
echoed with sobs. 

“ Ob, mother ! ” cried Alise when, service 
ended, they found themselves on the street. 
“ It is all so sad. I could not let my father go 
on a crusade if now he were with us.'’ 

“ Hot for our dear Lord, my little one ? ” 
And her mother looked earnestly into the up- 
turned blue eyes. “ Remember, ma petite, thou, 
too, art a crusader. On thy forehead in bap- 
tism was marked the Holy Cross and ever 
thou, too, must put first our Lord. He is thy 
captain, and thou, as a soldier, must follow 
where He calls, even to the giving up of thy 
dearest.” 

“ Oh, mother,” and Alise’s eyes glowed as 


IN THE CHATEAU. 


51 


she remembered what her mother had given 
up — even her dearest. “ Thou art right. I too 
would do it for our Lord.” 

In the church Alise had noticed two boys, 
one slender and strangely beautiful with a 
cloud of golden hair and eyes filled with a 
strange yearning, as if longing for things which 
as yet they never had seen. He was kneeling 
upon the floor, his hand pressed against hi& 
breast, the tears freely flowing down his cheeks 
as the cure told of the tortures of the pilgrims. 
The other was like a brave field flower beside 
some rare blossom. He was sturdy with a 
frank, manly, honest little figure and a face 
which told the story of a healthy soul and a 
brave heart. He looked as if the stones of 
the floor hurt his knees, and as if he wished 
the service would end and the processions be- 
gin. 

On the road homeward Alise spoke of these 
boys. 

“ One, mother, looked like an angel, the other 
like the Sieur Kaoul.” 

Alise never forgot her vision of the beauti- 


52 


THE LITTLE CRUSADERS. 


ful boy, and when she met him in Cloyes she 
was filled with delight. 

“ The other must have been Pierre,” she told 
her mother. 

“I wish they were not peasants. I would 
like them for playfellows.” 

After the visit to Chartres Alise was more 
anxious than ever to hear of crusades and the 
Holy Land. Oft would she seek her mother 
at her needlework in the great upper room, 
and drawing her stool across its marble floor 
would sit at her feet and entreat her to tell her 
of her father and of how he went forth to the 
Holy Land. 

The gentle Lady Bertrade, stroking her hair, 
would tell in her sweet way of how men, long- 
ing for many years to serve God, were made 
crusaders through the preaching of one Peter 
whom men called the Hermit, and how war- 
riors to prove their love for Christ had put 
on the cross and gone to the rescue of the 
tomb. 

“ They were cross-bearers, little one. Father 
Augustine hath told me of how the word hath 


IN THE CHATEAU. 


53 


its meaning in the Latin word crux which he 
saith doth stand for cross. Thy father, petite, 
was a true cross-bearer for he died in the sav- 
ing of another.” 

And then Lady Bertrade told Alise what it 
meant to wear the cross, and of the putting 
away of self, and the bearing of burdens for 
others, and she spoke tenderly of the day when 
Christ toiled towards Calvary, the heavy cross 
upon His back. His head bent low for all the 
world. 

Different, indeed, was her talk from that of 
Stephen’s, which had for its text processions 
and tombs, victories and crowns. 

And then she told Alise of her father, and 
of how on his journey towards Palestine he had 
paused to nurse one ill of a grievous disease 
and had fallen himself a prey to the sick- 
ness. 

“ Thou, ma petite,” she said, “ mayst become 
a crusader like thy father, though thou art but 
a girl and mayst not leave these walls.” 

Alise’s eyes sparkled. 

“ Oh, mother ! ” she said. “ And wilt thou 


54 


THE LITTLE CRUSADERS. 


make me a cross, and let me wear it upon my 
breast, and when I shall see it, it shall be a 
sign to remind me of the deeds I am to do. I 
thought that to be a crusader meant the fight- 
ing of Saracens, and the journeying to Pales- 
tine.” 

“ But no, Alise. It meaneth far more. The 
way of the cross is by self-denial and not by 
glory. Too often,” she said sadly, “ our knights 
and warriors forget this in the shedding of 
blood. I thank God, little one, that thy father, 
who taught me these things, died in a deed of 
mercy and not in one of blood.” 

On the next day, the Lady Bertrade, who 
was rarely skilful with the needle, worked a 
cross on the front of Alise’s tunic. 

“Thou art now a child of the cross,” she 
said, and then kissed her. “ A little crusader ! ” 

Alise skipped away through the hall in search 
of old Mere Matilde, that she might show her 
her new adornment. At an upper wdndow she 
caught sight of a russet gown. 

“ Mere Matilde ! Mere Matilde ! ” And she 
ran towards her. 


IN THE CHATEAU. 


55 


But her nurse, Avhose portly self was thrust 
well out the window, held up one round fat 
finger for silence, reaching back her hand with- 
out turning her head. 

“ Hark ! Come listen, little one, and let thy 
young ears tell if that be music I hear ! 

Together they listened. 

“ Of a truth, ’tis music and singing ! ” cried 
Alise. Dost hear, Mere Matilde ? ” 

The old nurse nodded. 

“ And ’tis strange that I hear the songs of 
the old crusaders — the songs I heard in my 
youth.” 

“ List ! ” cried Alise, and both thrust out their 
heads into the fresh spring air. 

“ Lord, restore to us the holy cross ! ” 

“ Lord, restore Christendom I ” 

They could now hear the words. 

Full of excitement, they craned their necks 
to their utmost. 

“ Look ! ” cried Alise. “ Mere Matilde, 
look ! ” 

She pointed eagerly to a field beyond the 
walls. 


66 


THE LITTLE CRUSADERS. 


Through a meadow along the Loir, sweeping 
down the long grass as it passed, went a strange 
little procession. Its leader bore the triple- 
tongued flag of France, the crimson Oriflamme. 
Behind him came a line of boys, and as they 
sang they marched toward Cloyes. 

Mere Matilde ! ” cried Alise, in wild excite- 
ment, “ what meaneth it ? ” 

The old woman shook her head. 

“ I know not, little lady. ’Tis strange for 
children to be about without their elders, but 
these are indeed strange times, and nobody 
knows what is likely to happen next. But, 
come, ’tis chill for thee here.” 

“ Oh, Mere Matilde,” cried Alise, who wished 
to see the last of the procession, “ Tis warm 
in the sun.” 

“ Bah ! ” and Matilde shrugged her shoulders. 
“ Thou, indeed, knowest more than thy elders. 
Tis the day of children. But tell me, child,” 
she said suddenly, ‘‘what meaneth that sign 
upon thy dress ? ” 

“’Tis my cross,” answered Alise, and her 
face flushed with shame that she had forgotten 


57 


IN THE CHATEAU. 

and been disobedient. “ I will come in, Mere 
Matilde. ’Tis chill, as thou sajst.” 

And then, as they descended the stairs, she 
told her of the cross and of its everyday 


meaning. 


CHAPTEE Y. 


THE OLD MAN OF THE MOUNTAIN. 

Truly there was much talk in the castle con- 
cerning crusades. The merchants and the 
priests brought tales of the crusaders and the 
trouveres sang of little else. 

Mere Matilde, too, had her stock of stories, 
and Alise loved nothing better than to hear 
them. The strangest of all was that of the 
“ Old Man of the Mountain,” which tale the 
old woman declared she had heard from a trou- 
vere who had remained ov^er night in the castle 
in the lifetime of Alise’s father. 

She told it to the little lady on the night of 
the day when they had heard the children 
singing the songs of the crusaders. 

She had brought thither her little mistress 
to put her to bed, and the two were alone in 
the great vaulted chamber. It was a huge 
room and the walls were paneled and hung 


THE OLD MAN OF THE MOUNTAIN. 59 

with tapestry which swung hard and flapped 
against the wood when the wind blew. In a 
brazier of burnished copper in the far end of 
the room was burning a mixture of cinnamon, 
bay, rosemary, and the fragrant smell rose 
high to the ceiling. 

“ It was long before thou wert born, little 
one,” began the old woman. “ Thy father, our 
Sieur Eaymond, sat in the hall, and thy mother 
wms a fair, pretty ” 

“ She is fair and pretty now,” interrupted 
Alise, her face firing, “ the most beautiful in 
the world.” 

Yes, yes, but not as she was then. Thou 
shouldst have seen her in a rare tunic of white 
samite, all over with gold crescents, and her 
mantle crimson, and edged with jewels which 
gleamed like the hidden sun touching the edge 
of the dark storm-cloud. About her slender 
waist was a girdle set with gems which flashed 
as she moved. St. Margaret, but my lady Avas 
fair ! Never, little one, Avilt thou look as thy 
mother. There are no pretty maidens now as 
when I Avas young. It chanced that on that 


60 


THE LITTLE CRUSADERS. 


night a trouvere happened at the castle, and 
while the wind howled about its walls he told 
us the story of the ‘ Old Man of the Mountain.’ 
He said that far, far away there lived a terrible 
old man in a great strong castle many times 
larger than this, and that no one, however 
strong, dare attack this castle.” 

“ But why not. Mere Matilde ? ” 

“ For the dread of dragons, little lady, great 
fiery dragons with mouths like caves that belch 
out smoke and scorching flames. They, the 
trouvere said, do keep people from entering. 
The castle is on a great high mountain, and the 
name of its owner is Hassassin. Men call him 
the Old Man of the Mountain.” 

Matilde lowered her voice as she uttered this 
awful name, and Alise, with a chilly feeling 
creeping down her back, looked fearfully about, 
her eyes resting uneasily upon the grotesque 
faces and writhing dragons of an old covered 
chest, then traveling to the walls where the 
spring gale was blowing to and fro the hang- 
ings on which was the story of the Prodigal 
Son. 


THE OLD MAN OF THE MOUNTAIN. 61 

The breeze would bring this wayward young 
man suddenly into the light, and then as sud- 
denly vanish him into the darkness which shad- 
owed the wall. It had a terrifying effect and 
made Alise creep closer to her nurse. 

“ And such strange things as go on within 
those walls ! ” 

Mere Matilde making smooth Alise’s curls, 
went on with her story. 

“ Why, little one, the trouvere said that the 
Old Man of the Mountain hath only to wish 
for a thing, great or small, while he rubbeth a 
magic lamp and, behold, it is there. They have 
it that his castle sprang up in a single night! ” 

“ O Mere Matilde, how fine ! Truly I would 
that I were like him.’’ 

“ The saints forbid ! ” and old Matilde caught 
the child in her arms. “ ’Tis the work of the 
Devil, little one. Nevertheless, ’tis fine to 
gaze upon. The castle sparkles with jewels, 
slaves bow down and do only the Old Man’s 
bidding. Oh that thou, little one, couldst have 
heard the trouvere. St. Paulo, but he told of 
splendor ! ” 


62 THE LITTLE CRUSADERS. 

“ But, Mere Matilde,’’ interrupted Alise, her 
hand on her nurse’s knee, “ how did he know ? 
The dragons, thou didst saj, kept all from 
entering.” 

For a moment the old woman looked 
troubled. She furrowed her brow, and took 
her full red underlip between her teeth. Sud- 
denly her face broke into a smile. 

“ Trouveres, little one, you must know, may 
go everywhere. Doubtless, the Old Man of the 
Mountain loveth a good story when he hears 
it. He hath many followers, and he sendeth 
them forth on errands for the slaying of men. 
They hate the crusaders and they creep, creep, 
creep up behind one without even a sound, and 
then, like 'the stealthy panther, quickly spring 
they on their prey, and behold, the brave 
knight lies dead. Kings, even, are not safe. 
Already hath one been slain, for when the ter- 
rible Hassassin wills that a man shall die 
naught but God hath power to save him.” 

Matilde lowered her voice to a whisper. 
Alise shivered and laid hold of her gown with 
one hand. 


THE OLD MAN OP THE MOUNTAIN. 63 

“ Oh look, look ! ” she cried in terror. 

But it was only the father of the Prodigal 
Son swinging slowly out of the darkness. 

“He wants children, boys and girls, and he 
sendeth his men to purchase them. When the 
children are fair to look upon, then there is the 
danger. He shutteth them fast in his castle 
and traineth them to do his will. Oh, but he 
is a terrible old man ! Often I have shaken in 
my shoes with dread that his slaves may come 
to France. But come now, little one, get thee 
to bed. Say now thine Our Father, and the 
Old Man will not get thee.” 

Alise did as she was bidden, but she could 
not help wishing that the carved ceiling was 
not so high, or her bed so hidden in the 
shadows. “ Oh, Mere Matilde, hearest thou 
the wind ? ” 

Truly a gale was howling about the castle, 
and it sounded* like the wailing of an army of 
sufferers. 

“ St. Paulo, but it blows ! ” And the old 
woman bent low to pick up Alise’s little gown 
from the floor. 


64 THE LITTLE CRUSADERS. 

“ I feel as if stealing upon me were a slave 
of the Old Man,” whispered Alise from her 
bed. 

“ INo, no,” answered her old nurse piously 
crossing herself. “ God protects the good, and 
thy heart, little one, is pure and holy. Pray 
thou for the sufferers in the Holy Land, and 
thou shalt forget thyself. Nevertheless, I will 
sit by thee. Say again thine Our Father, and 
shut thine eyes.” 

Then she lighted the night lamp, and made 
ready a place for herself by the bed of Alise. 
The light made weird figures on the floor and 
the myrtle plant which grew in the casement 
kept tapping against the lattice, while, ever and 
anon, the Prodigal Son, hating the darkness, 
came forth to seek the light. 


CHAPTER yi. 


THE SIEUE RAOUL. 

Hext morning, at the hour when the sun 
shone full on the turrets of the castle, the horn 
sounded at the gate, and Alise, from an upper 
window, caught sight of two knights seeking 
entrance. 

“ ’Tis my uncle Louis and the Sieur Raoul,” 
she called, rushing into the hall where her 
mother sat at work with her maidens. 

The Lady Bertrade, with a joy no less than 
Alise’s, met them in the doorway. 

“ Welcome,” and she smiled with a sweet 
graciousness. 

“Welcome, my uncle, welcome!” And 
Alise clung to the hand of the foremost of the 
strangers. 

“ Welcome, Messire ! ” And she greeted 
Count Raoul more sedately, but with a light in 
her upturned face. 

5 


65 


66 THE LITTLE CRUSADERS. 

“ For the Sieur Eaoul is mj very best friend/’ 
she often told her mother. 

They were indeed noble-looking visitors. 
The Count Raoul d’Alengon was tall, and sin- 
gularly handsome, with broad noble brow, blue 
eyes, and short curling black hair. Laying 
aside his armor he appeared in a short mantle 
of R’orman cut, over a close dress of chamois 
leather. Count Louis, on the contrary, was 
fair, and appeared in braver garments, all of 
tawny velvet embroidered in braid of gold, with 
a jeweled dagger hanging from a belt about 
his waist, and he had a merry laugh, and took 
the world lightly, and was ever making jests 
at which his sister, being very serious, knew 
not how much to laugh. 

With the arrival of these knights and their 
pages and their squires the whole castle awoke 
to life. 

A feast was made ready and all gathered 
about the great board. 

“ Hast heard the news of Cloyes and its hero, 
my lady?” inquired the Sieur d’Alengon 
addressing Lady Bertrade. 


THE SIEUR RAOUL. 


67 


“ Of Cloyes ? ” And she answered in sur- 
prise. “ What hath happened in the hamlet ? 
’Tis days since any went thither from the 
castle.’’ 

“ Hath not rumor of one Stephen reached 
thee ? ” 

“ But no, Messire. Hews doth travel slowly 
to our ears. But who may be this Stephen ? 
Tell me, I pray thee.” 

“ A mere slip of a lad, my lady, a pretty sprig 
whom the priests have plucked from the val- 
ley. So beautiful is he that ’tis said his face is 
like the angels, though who hath seen them to 
know, I can tell ye not.” 

“ ’Tis Stephen, ’tis my Stephen!” And 
Alise plucked at her mother’s sleeve. “ I saw 
him at Chartres, thou knowest, and then again 
at Cloyes. Thou knowest, mother, I told thee 
of his beauty.” 

“ But what of this Stephen ? ” And Lady 
Bertrade, smiling at Alise, turned towards the 
Count. 

‘‘ He preacheth a crusade, my lady, a cru- 
sade of children, and the lanes of our land are 


68 


THE LITTLE CRUSADERS. 


thronged with boys marching with banners, and 
singing the old songs of Bernard and the 
crusaders. Strange that ye, so near to Cloyes, 
have heard naught of what stirreth France.” 

“ But we have,” cried Alise in great excite- 
ment ; “ ’twas then a procession of Stephen’s 
which Mere Matilde and I saw from the tur- 
ret.” 

With her mother’s permission she told of the 
Oriflamme, and the procession and the songs of 
the crusaders. 

“ The lanes are full of them,” continued the 
Count. “ This Stephen tells of strange visions 
which came to him while he watched his sheep. 
Once, he saith, our Lord Himself appeared to 
him in the form of a pilgrim, and commanded 
him to arouse the children of the land, and go 
to the rescue of the Holy Sepulchre. He gave 
the lad a letter to the king commanding him to 
sanction the crusade. After rousing the chil- 
dren hereabouts he sought St. Denys and the 
king.” 

“ Preaching at St. Denys ! ” cried the lady in 
surprise. “ Tell me, Messire, with what result ? ” 


THE SIEUR RAOUL. 


“ Children, my lady, are rising all over 
France. They hail this Stephen as a prophet. 
He hath with him one Pierre who also hath 
power over the children.” 

“ ’Tis the one who looketh like thee, Sieur 
Kaoul,” broke in Alise. “ He was found in the 
woods when a babe and brought up with the 
shepherds of Cloyes.” 

“ Doth look like me, little one ? ” And the 
count laughed. ‘‘ The resemblance, my Alise, 
doth end there, for no sympathy have I with 
these visions.” 

‘‘ What saith the king ? ” inquired Lady 
Bertrade, pulling close her mantle as a gust of 
wind entered at the door with old Matilde. 

“ The king, my lady ? Oh, his majesty hath 
referred the matter to the University of Paris, 
which hath ordered the whole thing stopped, — 
most sensibly according to my way of think- 
ing. And he hath ordered, also, the issuing of 
an edict forbidding preaching to children, but” 
— and he shrugged his shoulders — who can 
stop the flow of a river, or check the rising of 
the tide ? Each day seeth the excitement 


70 THE LITTLE CRUSADERS. 

spread. Men and women, boys and girls are 
espousing the cause and assuming the cross of 
war. Stephen hath promised them that God 
will dry the waters of the sea, and that they 
shall march in safety to the Holy Land.” 

“ And surely enough, my Raoul, by the time 
the army starts, ’twill be warm enough to do it.” 

It was the Count Louis who spoke, and he 
held the whole thing in derision. 

Ho, Louis, jest not,” said his sister softly. 
‘‘ Do we not believe that God watcheth over 
even the sparrows ? Will He not guard and 
guide these little ones ? Are they not children, 
and did He not say to suffer them to come unto 
Him .? Father Sebastian hath told me of His 
promises.” 

“ Count Raoul,” it was Alise’s little voice, 
and she crept close to his side, and looked up 
in his face in her sweet, earnest way, “ was it 
indeed our Lord who came to Stephen ? ” 

The Count hesitated. 

“ Dear little Alise,” and the voice of the 
Seigneur grew reverent and sweet, “ I cannot 
tell thee, petite. I do not easily believe mar- 


THE SIEUR RAOUL. 71 

vels, but can I gainsay that God hath chosen 
this way to do His work ? But this I do know, 
little one, many hearts are aching now for the 
children who have forsaken their parents. 
’Tis hard to believe that God who hath com- 
manded us to honor our parents should take 
this way to do His work.” 

“ And thou knowest, Eaoul,” put in Count 
Louis who had been amusing himself with a 
great sleepy hound which lay at his feet, “ there 
are those who scruple not to say that the whole 
thing is the work of one not God.” 

“Of whom then, uncle?” cried Alise, her 
great eyes full of interest. 

“ There are people, sweet, and the Sieur de la 
Pierre is one, who declare it to be the work of 
magic, of Satan himself. Others, and of these 
there are not a few, maintain that the Old 
Man of the Mountaiu,” — at this awful name 
Alise shivered and drew closer to the Count, 
and all the company crossed themselves, — 
“ hath liberated two clerks whom long he held 
captive and hath sent them to France to bring 
to their master this army of children.” 


72 THE LITTLE CRUSADERS. 

“ And strange signs Lave come to pass,” put 
in Count Louis, pulling at the ear of the hound. 

“ Great clouds of butterflies, innocent and 
white as the children themselves, have risen 
and flown on light wings towards the sea, dis- 
appearing eastward over its blueness; and in 
one place, ’tis said, birds, though it be not the 
season, have gathered and face towards the 
south. In Brittany where the English rule it 
is the same. Fishes and frogs have multiplied 
as if by a miracle, while at Manshymer in 
Champagne, report doth say, a numberless 
multitude of dogs gathered together, divided 
into parties and engaged in flght until almost 
all were exterminated.” 

The next morning Alise entreated Count 
Eaoul to tell her more of Stephen. 

“ I know but little, my child,” he said, strok- 
ing her hair. 

“ Hast heard him preach, Messire ? ” 

‘‘ Once, little one, — at St. Denys, — and truly 
the boy hath a beautiful face.” 

Alise nodded. 

It always pleased her to have her friends 


THE SIEUR RAOUL. ^3 

admired, and such she now considered 
Stephen. 

“Wore he his shepherd’s dress, messire ? ” 

The Count nodded assent. 

“ He stood, little one, at the door of the 
Church wherein lieth the body of the blessed 
St. Denys. About him were gathered men, 
women, and children. And, truly, when the 
lad speaks ’tis with the golden tongue of 
Chrysostom.” 

“And what said he ? ” 

“He spoke of the wrongs of the pilgrims, of 
the cruelties of the Saracens, and when he 
told of his vision ’twas as if a veil had been 
lifted, and one caught a glimpse of Heaven.” 

“ And ’tis said,” put in Count Louis, saunter- 
ing up through the hall, “ that the young saint 
doth heal the sick, and perform divers 
miracles.” 

“Would that I might hear him! I, too, 
long to go upon the children’s crusade.” 

“ Hot much, pretty flower,” cried her uncle, 
and he frowned at Count Kaoul to say no 
more on the subject. 


74 THE LITTLE CRUSADERS. 

“ Be thou our good little saint and do thy 
crusading in the castle. But come no^y, to the 
death with thy crusades, — we will sally forth 
and try those falcons my sister hath purchased 
of the Brittany merchant.” 

So across the drawbridge they went, down 
to the meadows where the Loir stole through 
the grass. The willows looked yellow and 
pale green in the early spring sunlight, and, 
when Alise’s foot stirred a noise among the 
dry leaves in a little hollow, a rabbit sprang 
out from a log over a little brook bed, and 
went bounding up the bank. Flowers were 
peeping up, here and there, and the fleur-de- 
lys was growing at the edge of the brook. 
The air was soft and full of the balm of spring, 
and, in watching the trained flights of the 
birds, Alise forgot grave topics in the jocund 
gladness about her. 

But those were not the days of repose. 

There was always a call to strife and to 
warfare, and so it happened that, as the little 
party in their velvet and plumes, their falcons 
on their wrists, turned into a lane leading to 


THE SIEUR RAOUL. 75 

Cloyes, they came face to face with a procession 
of little crusaders. 

At its head walked a boy bearing the Ori- 
flamine, and its triple tongue rose full with the 
breeze, whipped itself into folds with a swish, 
then unfurled, and floated clear above the 
heads of its followers. 

They were boys and girls, and each bore a 
wax candle, and their faces were lifted upward. 
Here and there, one carried a censer, and as 
the smoke of the incense rose in perfumed 
waves, the bees, puzzled, lingered hesitatingly 
over their favorite flowers. 

Here and there was lifted a cross, and on 
each breast was the sign of the crusader. 

“ What seek ye ? ” asked the Sieur Kaoul and, 
pausing, he looked the leader full in the face. 

“ J erusalem, messire, Jerusalem, and the tomb 
of our Lord ! ” 

And then the whole procession broke into 
speech. 

“ Dieu le volt ! It is the will of God,” they 
cried. “We seek the Holy City, Jerusalem 
and the Tomb ! ” 


76 


THE LITTLE CRUSADERS. 


“God will care for us. We go to do His 
work,” explained the leader, when Count Louis 
spoke of the dangers of the trip. 

As they passed onward their voices floated 
back on the breeze, “ Dieu le volt ! Dieu le 
volt ! ” And the last that Alise saw of them 
they were pausing to kneel before a wayside 
figure of Christ. 


AT ST. DENYS. 


CHAPTER YII. 

AT ST. DENYS. 

Five miles north of Paris is the city of St. 
Denys. In the time of Stephen it was the 
custom for religious people to make pilgrimages 
thither to the tomb of the famous Saint Diony- 
sius, first bishop of Paris. This saint, people 
believed, could work miracles, even when 
dead, and so they bore to the tomb the sick 
and diseased. There were many marvelous 
stories told of St. Dionysius, the strangest 
being that, after very cruel treatment, he was 
beheaded and his body thrown into the Seine ; 
not fancying this watery grave, he arose 
from the river, and bearing his own head, 
walked two miles to the place which he de- 
sired for his final resting-place. 

Over his grave had been erected a church, 
in whose crypt lay the bodies of the kings of 

France from the time of Dagobert. At St. 

77 


78 THE LITTLE CRUSADERS. 

Denys, too, was kept the sacred Oriflamme, or 
triple-tongued banner of France. 

It was on a May morning that two pilgrims, 
passing near the sepulchre of St. Denys, were 
struck by the unusual beauty of a boy stand- 
ing within the shadow of the church. 

“ Compere,” said the younger of the pilgrims, 
a girl of fifteen, to the gray-haired man at her 
side, “ the boy hath purpose to speak. Let us 
draw near and hear his words.” 

With him were a few children, and both he 
and his followers wore crosses of red upon 
their breasts. 

Seeing the man and girl pause, two soldiers 
swaggering by stopped also. Attracted by the 
group, a beggar dragged his infirmities from 
the street to the church. Then tarried some 
women with children at their skirts, and two 
men driving a cart-load of fagots let fall their 
whips and stared, open-mouthed, to see what 
was happening. Shortly, the street was blocked 
with people, ox-carts, a courser of a knight, a 
palfrey of a lad}^, and basket-shaped wagons 
of unpeeled boughs full of charred sticks drawn 


AT ST. DENYS. 


79 


by three horses in line with bells on their high 
yokes. The drivers of these wagons were char- 
coal burners, and their heads were bare, and 
they wore black smocks down almost to their 
wooden shoes, and their faces were grimy and 
the hands which held the whips were toil- 
worn and black. 

“ Compere,” whispered the girl to her com- 
panion, “ ’tis the Stephen of whom we have 
heard. I know it by the red crosses.” 

And her face flushed, and her lips parted in 
eagerness. 

Listening, the crowd heard the boy tell of a 
wonderful vision he had seen, a vision of his 
Lord who had commanded him to preach the 
crusade of the children. 

The news spread. 

The pilgrims crowded about the church ; 
women left their washing by the streams and 
hastened to hear ; the charcoal burners tarried ; 
and the children of St. Denys, leaving play, 
came in haste to hear the little boy preaching. 

The town was full of pilgrims from all parts 
of France, and they bent ready ears to the 


80 


THE LITTLE CRUSADERS. 


wonder. Morning and evening Stephen spoke, 
and the pilgrims returning to their homes bore 
the news over France. 

There was in the boy’s voice the ring of 
truth. His faith was pure and strong. He 
never doubted his vision, and they who heard 
him believed because he believed. 

“ Our Lord,” he said, and his face was full of 
wistful sweetness, “ sulfered for ye. He was 
scourged, he was betrayed, he was crucified. 
What do ye for him ? ” 

It came as the question of a loving, grateful 
little heart, and when Stephen paused, it was 
answered by hundreds assuming the cross, 
for to hear, with those who listened, meant 
to do. 

“ Go not, Jehannette,” and the gray-haired 
pilgrim laid a restraining hand on the arm of his 
goddaughter, but it was in vain, for with 
beaming face and glowing eyes, she pressed 
forward, and returned not to the old man until 
the cross was on her breast, the vow upon her 
lips. 

“Compere! Compere!” she cried. “I am 


AT ST. DENYS. 81 

now a crusader. I will not return to Yaucou- 
leurs. I shall seek the tomb with Stephen.” 

At the close of the sermon came the hymns. 

“ Lord, restore to us the Holy Cross I ” 

“ Lord, restore to us Christendom ! ” 

“ Our feet, our feet,” they sang, “ shall stand, 
shall stand within thy walls, within thy walls. 
Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Jerusalem ! ” 

One late afternoon, when the sermon had 
been preached, Stephen, as usual, took his 
place at the head of the little procession of 
children. 

Instead of the crusader’s hymns, the boy 
prophet, as men now chose to call him — 
holding aloft a crucifix, began the song of old 
Zacharias — 

Benedictus ! Benedictus ! ” 

His voice was sweeter than the throstle in 
the hedge, or the nightingale in the deep wood, 
and it rose, quivered, gathered force, and as 
they marched, floated far and free on the quiet 
evening air. 

As he sang the children joined him, and then 
6 


82 THE LITTLE CRUSADERS. 

the people, taking up the chant in mighty 
voice. 

The appropriateness of the words made their 
own appeal. 

‘‘ And thou, child, shalt be called the prophet 
of the Highest.” 

At the moment when these words sounded 
full on the air the bells of the church of St. 
Denys chimed out the Angelus, as if in Amen 
to the words of the song. 

And even while the Ave Marias were 
being said, there were many who were asking 
themselves if this were not a sign to tell them 
that the child spoke true. 

So the preaching went on, and the little 
children who heard Stephen doubted not that 
God had sent him. 

One day there came to St. Denys the Lady 
Bertrade and Alise. 

They were passing through the town on their 
way to visit the father of the countess, one Sir 
Hugo, a famous old crusader who dwelt in the 
neighborhood of Paris. 

Lady Bertrade, listening to the singing, felt 


f 


AT ST. DENYS. 83 

her eyes fill with tears at the thought of these 
little children and their faith. And of her 
tenderness was born the determination of going 
with them on their journey. 

“ I have longed to labor for our Lord,” she 
thought, “and now here cometh the way. 
There will be sickness and trouble, and these 
little ones will need me.” 

In the quiet of the crypt, she told Alise of 
her purpose. 

The child’s face fiushed pink. 

“ Oh, maman,” she whispered, “ thou art an 
angel. And I have thee for my mother.” 

And she kissed her hand. 

“ And I, mother ? ” 

“ Thou too, little one, shalt wear the cross ” 

Together they sought Stephen. 

When he saw Alise, his face glowed a wel- 
come. 

“ Thou, too, lovest our Lord,” he cried, and 
fastened on her dress the red cross of the 
crusader. 

“ Eemember, dearest,” and her mother’s soft 
hand smoothed back her hair, “ with the 


t 


84 THE LITTLE CRUSADERS. 

putting on of the cross thou puttest otf self. 
1^0 more shalt thou think of what thou wouldst 
desire. A true cross-bearer hath crucified all 
else but our dear Lord.” 

hiTear by stood a pilgrim, the same brother 
who had spoken to Stephen at Cloyes before he 
saw the vision. 

Turning to Lady Bertrade,he said something 
about the “ Yia Crucis ” and the “ Yia Dolo- 
rosa,” and the lady bowed her head. 

‘‘ Maman, what meant he ? ” asked Alise 
when he had passed on his way. 

“ That the way of the cross and the way of 
sorrow are the same, and that one is but the 
name for the other.” 

Alise looked puzzled. 

The way of the cross to her just then meant 
Stephen, and singing, and a wonderful march, 
and the glories of Jerusalem. 

“ ’Tis not a way of sorrow. The sea is to 
dry before our path,” she told her mother, and 
she skipped at her side in the thought of this 
most wonderful journey. 

The work went on. 


AT ST. DENYS. 


85 


Children from castle, as from hut, joined the 
procession. It was like a madness which 
stopped not for bolt nor bar, since children 
broke away from homes even when restrained 
in their rooms. There were priests at work, 
some aiding Stephen, but many endeavoring 
to persuade the children to return to their 
homes. Evil people, with wicked intentions, 
feigned goodness and took the cross as a means 
to disguise their schemes. 

The excitement went throughout the length 
and breadth of France, a man named John of 
Hungary preaching in village and town. In 
Germany an immense army, led by one little 
Nicholas, marched away crying, ‘‘ We go to get 
the cross beyond the sea, and to baptize the 
Moslems.” 

The French children gathered at a place 
called Yendome, and, during the latter part of 
June, fifteen thousand, no older than twelve 
years, came from Paris. And back in Cloyes 
old Marie was wroth. 

“ Banners, indeed ! ” she said. “ And my 
Pierrelo gone, and his sheep all neglected, and 


86 


THE LITTLE CRUSADERS. 


the garden full of weeds. ]^o, Jacques, no, ’tis 
not God who calls these little ones. Pierre is 
a good lad, and he went because of false prom- 
ises. And I had but one child left, Jacques, 
this one little lamb, not of our fold, but dearer 
now than all my dead children, and he hath 
gone from these old arms which rocked him 
and loved him.” 

And her grief was a sad thing to see, and it 
was fierce, too, like that of a sh e-animal when 
it hath lost its cub. At night when the howl 
of the wolves came from the forest, or the 
wind beat upon the roof, she would rise as of old, 
and steal softly to the boy’s bed to still his fears, 
and when she would find it empty and remem- 
ber, her heart would ache, and she would 
creep back to old Jacques, and pray to God 
to watch over the child, and keep him from 
harm and evil, and, oh, to give him back, to 
give him back. 


CHAPTEE yill. 


THE DEPAKTUEE. 

It was a day in June. The air was laden 
with the perfume*of the roses and the clover. 
Butterflies floated on the gentle breeze which 
bent northward the fields of grain. Across the 
blue of the sky traveled the slow white clouds. 
The land lay green and quiet, and the peasants 
in the fields moved steadily at their tasks. Up 
the road two youths drove an ox team, both 
walking, one holding the whip. In the fields 
the red cattle slowly chewed their cuds, and 
from a meadow came the song of a lark. 

Old Gaston, working painfully in his field — 
for he was three score, — heard strange sounds. 
It was like the tramp of an army, but there 
was no war in the land. 

He slowly straightened his back and stood 
leaning upon his stick. 


87 


88 


THE LITTLE CRUSADERS. 


The sound came from beyond that hill, and 
certainly it was the sound of feet. 

Watching, he presently saw a horse appear 
on the brow of the hill. On it sat a boy. Then 
came another, another, then a chariot, all draped 
in rare carpets. In it reclined a boy whose hair 
gleamed gold in the sunlight. Behind him 
came other boys on horseback, then two chil- 
dren afoot, then two more, then more and more, 
some girls, some boys, and they were clad in 
gray, and on each breast was a cross of red, 
and their hats were broad brimmed, and they 
each carried a staff. 

On they passed, a line appearing over the 
hill and unwinding as doth the yarn from a 
ball. 

’Twas a strange sight. Old Gaston’s mouth 
fell open, and he stared in wonder. 

On came the children, and some carried ban- 
ners, and others, crosses, and every once in a 
while in the line appeared a grown person, or a 
priest. 

Up the hills, into the valleys, on they 
marched, and the boy in the chariot, lifting 


THE DEPARTURE. 


89 


his voice, began a wonderful song whose notes 
floated backward and were taken up by the 
children until the long line became a moving 
thread of harmony. 

“ Fairest Lord Jesus, 

Ruler of all nature, 

Thou of Mary and of God the Son ! 

Thee will I cherish. 

Thee will I honor. 

Thee my soul’s glory, joy, and crown ! 

“ Fair are the meadows, 

Fairer still the woodlands, 

Robed in the blooming garb of Spring, 

Jesus is fairer, 

Jesus is purer. 

Who makes our saddened heart to sing. 

“ Fair is the sunshine, 

Fairer still the moonlight, 

And the sparkling, starry host, 

Jesus shines brighter, 

Jesus shines purer, 

Than all the angels Heaven can boast.” 

“ ’Tis the children’s crusade,” said the driver 
of the oxen guiding his team to the side of the 
road. 

The two boys paused to hear and to watch, 
and when the song was well in their ears, and 


90 THE LITTLE CRUSADERS. 

the look of Stephen in their eyes, they left their 
oxen, and threw away the whip, and began to 
march also. 

As the children sang on, the words reached 
village and town, and out poured the boys and 
girls, and though their parents commanded and 
wept, on they also marched over the hill, down 
the vale, across the river, following the ancient 
road to Blois. 

In the evening Stephen gave the order to rest. 

Then descended he from his chariot and 
addressed the army. When the bell of some 
neighboring church chimed the Angelus the 
children bowed their heads and the thirty 
thousand little voices repeated the Hail Mary, 
and the Our Father. 

And thus began the march from Yendome. 

Food the children expected to beg of the 
people of the farms and villages, and water 
could be had of the sparkling brooks. 

God had said : 

“ Ask, and it shall be given you.” 

Take no thought for your life, what ye shall 
eat.” 


THE DEPARTURE. 


.91 


Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s 
good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” 

“ Suffer the little children to come unto . 
me.” 

With such texts did Stephen cheer his army 
when at noon or eve they broke ranks to hear 
him preach. 

At first all went well ; the songs were in- 
spiring ; the adventure was new ; and the faith 
of the children was unquestioning. Asking 
nothing of man, they had set off in search of 
that kingdom which was not to be forbidden 
to little children. But, presently, the feet be- 
gan to weary of the endless road, the days 
Avere hot, the dust, stirred by thousands of 
feet, rose in white clouds and made dry the 
lips and choked the breath. 

“ Are we not there ? ” the little ones began 
to cry. 

“Is this Jerusalem?” they asked at the 
sio^ht of each hamlet or town. 

It grew hotter and hotter, the brooks dried 
up, the flowers withered in the fields, the moss 
dried on the stones, and still onward trudged 


92 THE LITTLE CRUSADERS. 

the children. The heat, they were told, only 
proved that God was drying the sea. 

Food became scarce, and, overcome by hun- 
ger and fatigue, little crusaders began to drop 
by the way, never again to rise. And the 
dreadful homesickness seized many and, like 
people in a frenzy, they would turn and fly 
from the army, making their way backward as 
best they knew how. 

The nights were the worst. Then the trou- 
bles rose into a wail, a wail which found echo 
in many a home of France. The brave little 
crusaders going across the sea to fight the Sar- 
acens wanted their mothers. 

It was then that a beautiful lady in gray 
began to be loved of the children. She was 
the great lady of the chateau at Cloyes, and 
yet she marched on foot like a peasant, and 
went to and fro among the children, petting, 
comforting, soothing. 

At her waist was a wallet containing simples, 
and salves, and ointments, and remedies for all 
manner of hurts and pains. 

At her side was Alise, no longer in velvet, 


THE DEPARTURE. 


93 


but clad in a scant, clinging gray gown, and 
wearing a close little cap. 

Alise, too, had blistered feet and often she 
was hungry and weary. But before they had 
started her mother had given her a talisman 
against weariness. 

“ Kemember, petite,” she had said, “ if thou 
bearest the cross and walkest in the way of 
our Lord, thou must remember the weariness 
of His feet as He bore His cross to Calvary.” 

To the older children Lady Bertrade spake 
as she did to Alise, and so much in earnest 
were the little believers that they set their 
lips, conquered their fatigue, and took up the 
march. 

But over many she had no influence, and 
selfishness led them to disorder and to fights 
over the food, and ill-treatment of the younger 
ones. 

Stephen, alarmed at the discontent, renewed 
the promise concerning the sea. 

“ Soon will we be there,” he would say, as 
each day murmurs arose concerning Jerusalem. 

At last they reached the Khone and, cross- 


94 


THE LITTLE CRUSADERS. 


mg, they found themselves in Burgundy. 
Here their troubles ceased. 

The crusading spirit was strong among its 
people. Hundreds joined the ranks, and food 
was given freely. 

Strengthened and refreshed, the old fire re- 
turned to the children. With waving banners 
and uplifted voices the long line wandered into 
Provence and found itself in the garden of all 
Europe. It was a land flowing with milk and 
honey and blossoming with flowers, and the 
children wove garlands and twisted them about 
their banners. 

They stuck sweet sprays of the mignonette in 
their caps, and filled their hands with the white 
and red poppies, the gleaming king cup, and 
the purple iris. Wandering on with flowers 
and songs, they passed the moss-grown ruins 
of the Koman days, old aqueducts and temples 
without roofs. 

Sometimes, when the army would pause for 
rest, little Pierre, longing for his free shepherd 
life, would steal off to the deep wood, and 
pushing in through the still greenness, would 


THE DEPARTURE. 


95 


come close upon the dun deer feeding in some 
spot distant from man, or, when the wood was 
not a deep forest, he would stretch at ease 
under some leafy tree and lie deep in the grass 
and watch the white clouds journeying across 
the blue sky. Sometimes a heron would rise 
on the wing, its long legs dangling against the 
sky’s blueness, and then Pierrelo, being but a 
little boy, would forget the crusade and the 
quest for his father and long for a peregrine 
falcon. One day he stole through the field 
towards a little hill where rested the army. 
His knowledge of the out doors made him 
believe that he should find a spring beyond 
the hill on the edge of the wood. 

He bounded along singing a gay little tune. 
Surely this was the spring. He knew by the 
paths coming from many directions. It gushed 
out from the crevice between two rocks, and it 
was well screened by thick shrubs and the steep 
sides of the hills. He could not see the water 
itself until he came close upon it, and there, 
some few feet from the little stone basin hol- 
lowed out by the water, was sitting a child, a 


96 


THE LITTLE CRUSADERS. 


little girl in the dress of a crusader, and by her 
the pilgrim whom Pierre remembered to have 
met on his road to Cloyes, immediately before 
Stephen saw the vision. 

The little maid turned, and giving him a 
smile of inviting welcome, motioned him to 
silence. 

He looked and understood. 

It was before noon, and the birds were com- 
ing to the spring to bathe in the waters of the 
little stone basin. 

Daintily one approached, hopping lightly 
from spot to spot, its nervous little head first 
on one side, then on the other. It coquetted 
with the water, touching it coyly with its feet, 
then darting into its coolness a sharp little beak. 

At last it gave a plunge, and went plumb 
down into the depth of the pool, sputtering 
and shaking its wings, and then suddenly 
thrusting up its head and looking about as if to 
say, “ Is there the least harm in my bathing ? 
I assure you there is not.” 

Alise was delighted — for the little maid was 
the small lady of Cloyes, — and she laughed 


THE DEPARTURE. 97 

aloud as she made a seat for Pierre on the rock 
beside her. 

“ Thou art Pierre,” she said quickly, “ 1 saw 
thee at Chartres. Brother Sylvestre,” and she 
turned to her companion, “ this boy is of Cloyes, 
and the friend of Stephen.” 

The pilgrim smiled a welcome, and the little 
birds flying away, Pierre, after making his 
peasant’s reverence, requested permission to 
quench his thirst at the spring. 

It was a June day, and there was that in the 
air which made one love the fields, and the 
sound of the water on the rocks, and Pierre 
drank deeply, resting his hands on the moss of 
the stones above the brook and putting his 
mouth well down in the water. 

Then the three sat watching for more birds, 
and hearing all kinds of the queer noises that 
the little creatures of the woods make in mov- 
ins: about on their errands. 

And, by and by. Brother Sylvestre talked 
with them about the birds, telling them of his 
love for the feathered things in the old home 
of his childhood. 

7 


98 


THE LITTLE CRUSADERS. 


Then more spake he, and told them of a holy 
man of Assisi, one named for their own land, 
who gave up for his Lord splendor and wealth 
and glory that he might found an order among 
men to make them better ; and of how, passing 
on his way one day, he had raised his eyes and 
seen the trees filled with a multitude of birds, 
and of how he said to his companions, “Await 
me here in the road, and I will go and preach 
to my sisters the birds.’’ 

And of how when he opened his mouth they 
came from the trees and stood quietly until St. 
Francis finished speaking, and gave them his 
blessing, and of how they oped their beaks and 
stretched forth their necks and spread their 
wdngs, and reverently bowed their heads even 
to the earth, and of how when they rose they 
burst into song, and divided into four parts like 
to the arms of the cross. 

“ Hast seen Francis ? ” asked Alise, her little 
heart tender at the thought of one so gentle. 
Brother Sylvestre nodded slowly. 

“ I,” he said, “ am his follower ; ” and, rising, 
he led the children back to the army. 


THE DEPARTURE. 


99 


From the brow of the hill they could see 
the vast host, thousands upon thousands of 
little children, some sitting, some standing, 
children everywhere as far as the eye could 
reach. 

Alise and Pierre, impatient to return, won- 
dered that Brother Sylvestre paused so long 
to gaze upon the army, and why he sighed 
when at last he started. 

When they reached the host, the order to 
march had been given, and the crusaders were 
falling into line. 

It was in the trying times of the journey 
that Pierre grew to love Brother Sylvestre. 

Though not wearing the cross he marched 
with the army. He was on the road to Italy 
to counsel with Francis at Assisi, and seeing 
an opportunity to help others, journeyed with 
the crusaders. Alise had been his friend from 
the beginning, and the two had many long 
talks together, in which the child opened her 
little heart, and showed him its sweetness. 
But Pierre attracted him strongly. He felt a 
certain manly pride in the boy’s wholesome 


LofC. 


100 


THE LITTLE CRUSADERS. 


good looks,' in bis sturdiness, in his love of 
everything of the woods. 

Pierre told him of Marie and Jacques and 
the little house at Cloyes. 

“ And thou leftest them ? ” asked the Francis- 
can, his eyes narrowing as he looked Pierre 
full in the face. 

“ For our Lord,” answered the lad, but his 
tone lacked confidence. The Franciscan had 
not condemned him, and yet he felt guilty. 

At sunset, when they would pause near some 
hamlet, and he would hear the village sounds, 
and see the bees making for their straw-bound 
hives, the sheep descending the hills, he began 
asking himself questions about his duty in 
leaving, and, once, when they were crossing a 
little brook and the smell of mint came fresh 
to his nostrils, he had to bite hard on his lips 
to keep from crying. It brought so to his 
mind the brook at Cloyes, and the strewn floor 
of the living room when Marie would sweeten 
the white earth floor by the sprinkling about 
of mint sprigs. 

One day in Burgundy Pierre yielded to his 


THE DEPARTURE. 


101 


homesickness and, creeping away from the army 
resting in the heat of the day, he sat down in 
the roots of a tree and let his eyes grow misty 
until the fields were no longer green before them. 

“ Why grievest thou, Pierrelo ? ” 

It was Brother Sylvestre and, stooping, he 
sat by Pierre on the roots. 

Then the boy told him of his longing for 
Cloyes and his fear that Marie was grieving. 

For a moment Brother Sylvestre was silent. 

“ Thy crusade, my son, hath but now begun. 
Only now thou art beginning to feel the press- 
ing of the cross. Didst ever think that thy 
crusade was to aid thy parents ? ” 

Pierre looked puzzled. 

“ The crusade,’’ he said, “ was to come with 
Stephen.” 

“ The crusade, my boy,” and the voice of 
the priest was strong and true, “ is to do the 
will of God, and He hath commanded children 
to honor and succor their parents. I speak to 
thee, my boy, as to one well known, for thy 
face looketh like a face I loved in the old days, 
and I would set thee upon the true road of 


102 


THE LITTLE CRUSADERS. 


right living. Remember, then, that to serve 
Him who is our Lord meaneth the forgetting 
of self and our desires, and peace cometh only 
with the doing of right alone.” 

It happened, one day, that Alise, sent by her 
mother, drew near to speak to Stephen con- 
cerning some bread for the children. Brother 
Sylvestre, passing, stopped and gazed upon the 
two whom he had seen together before at 
Cloyes. How, the shepherd boy wore the 
velvet, the little lady, the homespun. 

He noted how the face of the boy, beauti- 
ful as ever, had grown in pride and unconcern 
for others. He still saw visions, — his eyes told 
that, — but the visions were no longer of thorns 
and tombs, but of victories and crowns. 
Alise’s face, on the contrary, was even more 
loving than on that day at Cloyes, and in her 
eyes was the luminous light of love. 

“ The first shall be last, and the last, first,” 
he muttered half aloud, and went on his way. 

At Lyons he warned Lady Ber trade against 
a certain woman making herself prominent 
among the crusaders. 


THE DEPARTURE. 


103 


“ It may chance that I err,” he said, “ but 
there be many evil people in the army, and 
thy child hath a beauty which would make a 
slave-dealer long to possess her.” 

Alarmed, Lady Bertrade trusted Alise only 
with Pierre or Brother Sylvestre. 

One day when the army was nearing Mar- 
seilles a little maid from Yendome addressed 
Lady Bertrade. 

“ Madame,” she said, “ a woman of the army 
hath asked me to tell thee that Brother Syl- 
vestre would have thee return to yonder house. 
Thy child hath twisted her foot and they have 
borne her within.” 

The house was in the rear of the army, but 
Lady Bertrade, knowing Alise to be with 
Brother Sylvestre, turned hastily and went 
thither. A woman, watching her from behind 
a tree, laid a pudgy forefinger against the side 
of her broad nose and smiled craftily. 

By the time Lady Bertrade reached the 
house the tramp of the small feet sounded far 
in the distance. 


CHAPTER IX. 


MARSEILLES. 

On went the army with banner and song, 
the crosses gay with garlands of the flowers 
of Provence. Presently, before them rose a 
line of blue hills, and fresh on the soft sum- 
mer air came a cool smell, and a taste which 
left salt on the lips, and word went through 
the ranks that before them, beyond the hills, 
was the sea — the sea which was to dry before 
those tired little feet, and let them pass freely 
to Jerusalem. 

The excitement lent haste to even the 
weariest, and the poles of the banners quivered 
in sympathy with the joy of those who bore 
them. 

On the ridge of the hills the first of the 
line paused. Before their inland eyes lay the 
blue Mediterranean, and on its coast the 

strange old city of Marseilles stood safe with- 
104 


MARSEILLES. 105 

in its walls. The waves rolled in and beat 
upon the land, and a cry burst from the little 
crusaders. 

“ The sea ! The sea ! ” 

“ Dieu le volt ! Dieu le volt ! ” 

Hark! 

The people of Marseilles, busy in the streets, 
paused to listen. Small Denys, son of Anthony 
the blacksmith, was first to give the alarm. 

“ ’Tis music ! ’’ he said, and he went with 
a scramble to the roof of the smithy, and stood 
erect, craning his neck, his sooty little hand 
at his ear. ’Tis tramping ! ” he called to his 
father below. 

“ ’Tis children ! ” And he curved his hand 
over his mouth and shouted as through a 
trumpet. Look ! Look ! There’s two, there’s 
four ; oh, father, father, there’s dozens and 
dozens, and more coming ! ” 

The streets filled. People flocked to the 
gates. 

‘‘Denys, thou are right,” cried the black- 
smith, as he, too, scrambled to the roof. 

Towards the city gates came the children, 


106 


THE LITTLE CRUSADERS. 


appearing over the hill like a ribbon unwind- 
ing. Banners, crosses, the Oriflamme itself ! 
Girls, boys, boys, girls ! The good people of 
Marseilles rubbed their eyes. 

Were all the children in Christendom com- 
ing that way ? Many hurried forth to meet 
the curious army. 

As they drew near they could hear the 
words of the song — 

“Thee will I cherish, 

Thee will I honor.” 

And as more came over the hill, 

“ Fair are the meadows, 

Fairer still the woodlands.” 

And still more, 

“ Fair is the sunshine. 

Fairer still the moonlight, 

Jesus shines brighter, 

Jesus shines purer, 

Than all the angels Heaven can boast.” 

“ Is this Jerusalem ? Is this Jerusalem ? ’’ 
And a throng of children pressed about the 
people. Denys, who had followed his father, 
laughed aloud in derision. 

“ ’Tis Marseilles ! ” he called shrilly, but his 


MARSEILLES. 


lor 

father silenced him, for Stephen, beautiful 
in a suit of rare blue velvet, sprang from his 
chariot, and addressed the leader of the men 
from Marseilles. 

“ Messire,” he said, “ we seek Jerusalem, and 
the tomb of our Lord. "We ask to remain in 
Marseilles for the night. To-morrow, the sea 
shall dry and we shall go forward to the Holy 
Land.” 

The merchants and citizens looked at each 
other in amazement. 

What manner of talk was this ? 

But Stephen insisted. 

He described his vision and told of the letter 
to the king. 

“Wait, then,” said the citizen. “We will 
inform the authorities.” 

Soon they returned and led Stephen into the 
city. The army waited without. Stephen 
repeated his story, insisting that God was to 
dry the sea, that a way to Jerusalem would 
be made. 

The people of Marseilles refused to surren- 
der their doubts about the sea, but after some 


108 THE LITTLE CRUSADERS. 

consultation they decided that it would be of 
advantage, and do no political harm, to admit 
the crusaders, since many of them were pro- 
vided with money for their entertainment. 
Certainly, it would have taken stony hearts 
to have refused travel-worn children who be- 
lieved that God had sent them, food and rest ; 
so, after some hours, wait, the gates were 
opened, the army entered, and the crusaders 
sought shelter for the night. 

Many had kinsmen to whose houses they at 
once repaired. Others found shelter in the 
inns. The convents and monasteries protected 
many, but there were others, and they were 
not a few, who were without food or money, 
and they, in consequence, must remain in the 
streets. “ What matters it ? ’■ they asked cheer- 
fully. “ To-morrow, there will be no more 
sea.” 

Brother Sylvestre shook his head. 

“ Poor little children,” he said, “ little wan- 
dering lambs, astray from their shepherd.” 

He was making his way to a monastery for 
the night when he came face to face with Alise 


MARSEILLES. 


109 


and Pierre. They looked frightened, and the 
girl was clinging to the hoy. 

Then Pierre explained that nowhere could 
they discover Lady Bertrade. They had been 
wandering about the strange city, and they were 
footsore and very weary, and tears were near 
the surface. 

They had missed her beyond the hills, but 
had thought her with the children in the rear. 

Brother Sylvestre remembered that she had 
told him that she and Alise were to stay in 
Marseilles at the house of a kinsman, one 
Eaymond d’Evitet. 

Thither he took the children, but the house 
was barred, and an old servitor informed the 
three that his master was away upon a journey ; 
no Lady Bertrade had been there, so they 
searched the streets until the setting of the sun. 

And then. Brother Sylvestre, telling the 
children that surely the morning would bring 
her, took them with him to his monastery. 


CHAPTEK X. 


THE WAT. 

"What was the matter ? 

Along the beach, like gulls resting before a 
flight, were lines of children. The sun rose 
higher and higher and the waves beat still on 
the sand. The breeze blew in salt and fresh, 
and the sky arched blue above the water. 

“Wait,” said Stephen, and his voice was 
strong with faith. “ God hath promised. The 
day is not done yet.” 

For hours the children waited. When the 
tide went out they were sure the promise was 
being fulfilled. 

“ The sea is drying ! ” they cried, and began 
to raise their banners. The people of Marseilles 
felt sick at heart. They knew the ways of the 
sea, and it hurt them to see the faith of these 
children. When night came, and the salt waves 
still rose and fell in the harbor, they offered the 


THE WAY. 


Ill 


army lodging for a second night. Morning 
again dawned, and the sea went its daily course 
of flow and ebb. 

Then the children began to doubt. Perhaps 
it was not God who had promised but Stephen 
only. 

“We will return to our fathers and our 
mothers,” and thousands turned their backs on 
the cruel sea and entered Provence ; others, 
knowing their parents to be hard and unforgiv- 
ing, and not averse to the use of a cudgel, found 
homes as servants in Marseilles. The greater 
and more earnest part of the army waited 
on, hoping yet that the promise would be ful- 
fllled. 

“ Even if ye have faith as big as a grain of 
mustard seed,” said Stephen, and he told them 
of those of old whose faith had made them 
Avhole. Homesick, yet confident, still they 
waited, and the sea beat on. 

Alise could think of nothing but her mother. 

“ My little daughter,” said Brother Sylvestre, 
“ doubtless the sickness or trouble of some child 
detaineth her. I will send a messenger back 


112 THE LITTLE CRUSADERS. 

over our road thither, and, perchance, he shall 
discover the cause of her delay.’’ 

“ Fret not, demoiselle,” said Pierre. “ Surely 
she will come.” It was pretty to see his care 
of Alise. His ways were very thoughtful, and 
a serious look was growing on his frank little 
face. 

On the evening of the second day Pierre 
made a resolution. Brother Sylvestre had 
talked much with him, and his mind had been 
at work wondering if, after all, crusading was 
the best way of serving God. 

“Demoiselle Alise,” he said next morning, 
and, as he threw back his curls, he looked like 
a miniature copy of the Count Baoul, — “ If thy 
mother comes not soon, we will leave the 
crusaders, and together return to seek her.” 

“ Oh, how good thou art, Pierrelo,” and 
Alise slipped her hand in his, “ but no, I cannot 
let thee, for then thou shouldst never see 
Jerusalem, and wouldst lose the hope of thy 
crown, and of finding thy father.” 

“ Brother Sylvestre says that love is our 
crown, and that we must care for each other, 


THE WAY. 113 

and bear each other’s burdens. That is true 
crusading. And I promised him that I would 
win my spurs as a true knight of the cross. I 
shall remain with thee, demoiselle, and together 
we will seek thy mother ! ” 

Wandering about the streets they were ac- 
costed by a woman. She was large and coarse- 
looking, with big lips, and a fat chin which 
wrinkled itself double when she smiled. On 
her breast was the cross of red so the children 
believed her when she told Alise that she was 
seeking her to deliver a message from the Lady 
Bertrade. 

“ Thou art to sleep sound this night, my little 
lady, for my news is good. Thy mother 
stoppeth at the house of my cousin, whither 
she went with a suffering child. The messenger 
followed thee at once, but nowhere couldst thou 
be found. Thy mother, moreover, would have 
thee know that she will be with thee before 
the drying of the sea. Fret not, but stay 
quietly in Marseilles until her coming.” 

Full of joy, the two little crusaders with 

lightened hearts hastened to the monastery. 

8 


114 THE LITTLE CRUSADERS. 

To their disappointment Brother Sylvestre did 
not look relieved. In fact, his face appeared 
even more troubled. 

He made the children describe the woman. 

Then he shook his head. 

“ I like not the message,” he said and warned 
the children to avoid her. 

That evening the little crusaders began to 
revile Stephen. 

“ Where are thy visions now ? ” cried the 
very ones who had flattered him. 

When he attempted to restore order they 
scorned him. 

Poor children, they were tired of looking at 
that sea which still beat on and on, not a wave 
drier than the day before. 

Who art thou that thou shouldst command 
us? ” And they scoffed and turned away from 
Stephen. Deserted by his high-born friends, 
puzzled that the promise was not fulfilled, his 
vanity dropped from him as a garment. His 
eyes grew wistful, and his beauty seemed to 
droop as doth that of a flower when water 
faileth it. 


THE WAY. 


115 


The thirty thousand children dwindled away 
to five or six thousand little believers who 
still hoped on. The people of Marseilles be- 
gan to murmur at the necessity of feeding 
such numbers of children, and, repenting of 
their promises, made scant effort to procure 
food„ 

Each day affairs grew worse. The sea beat 
on, and the anxious little eyes watching it grew 
misty with disappointment. 

Alise and Pierre, growing weary of the wait 
on the beach where the sun sent dazzling rays 
in their eyes, wandered about the city, going 
in and out the narrow streets where the roofs 
of the houses overhung the windows. 

Sometimes, a boy or girl would lean over 
the curved railing of some front window gallery 
and beg for a history of the journey to Mar- 
seilles. Then the two would pause, and Alise 
would tell of Stephen and the vision and the 
march to Marseilles. Sometimes, a kind-faced 
woman, in every-day kirtle and coif, would come 
hurriedly from a house and stop them with a 
cake of oat and bran. 


116 THE LITTLE CRUSADERS. 

You pretty dears,” she would say, and draw 
Alise close to her and give her a kiss. 

Never, since the King of England had paused 
in Marseilles on his way to the Holy Land, had 
there been so many strangers in the city. 

The streets were so narrow and so full of 
people that Alise and Pierre often found them- 
selves pressed close against window or wall. 

Sometimes a priest would pause and give 
them his blessing. 

To see Alise was to feel kindly. 

Even the gamins of Marseilles checked their 
tongues in her hearing. 

The cathedral was so grand that the two 
children paused before it. A kind-faced priest, 
noticing their interest, told them that once, long 
before, on that spot had stood a temple to 
a heathen goddess named Diana, and of how, 
even before that, an altar to Baal had offered 
its oblation on the identical spot where at that 
moment Christian priests were celebrating mass. 

“ Enter, little crusaders, enter,” he said, and 
led the way. 

The children stared in wonder, so splendid 


THE WAY. 117 

was the sight which burst on their country 
eyes. 

The mighty bishop of Marseilles, in gorgeous 
vestments, was celebrating mass, and on the 
stone floor knelt innumerable people. Down 
sank the children, and hand in hand they 
prayed : Pierre, that he might become a true 
knight of the Cross, Alise, that the good God 
would send her mother as quickly as possible, 
and above them floated the “ Holy, holy, 
holy ! ” of the Sanctus, and their hearts cried 
their “ Amen ” when the Agnus Dei rose and 
fell in solemn imploring notes. 

They both forgot Jerusalem, and the cruel 
sea, and knelt on, one with her curls rippling 
out over the shoulders of her gray dress from 
under her close cap, the other with head bowed 
low, his cap in one hand, his eyes on the stones. 

’Twas a pretty sight, and yet, when a 
woman kneeling near by saw the red crosses 
on their breasts she caught her own little one 
closer in her arms and thanked God that her 
children were babies. 

Behind a pillar stood a man and a woman 


118 THE LITTLE CRUSADERS. 

The latter was large and coarse looking, and 
her chin doubled when she talked. , 

“There is the child, now,” she whispered, 
and plucked the man hard at the sleeve. 

He shook her off crossly, and whispered a 
few quick words. 

“In the morning,” answered the woman. 
“ Is she not a rare one, and would she not please 
even the Old Man of the Mountain himself ? ” 

The next morning the little crusaders were 
relieved from their suspense. 

The sea did not dry up, but the way was 
made. 

Two merchants of Marseilles, moved, they 
said, by the faith of the children, came forward 
with an offer to convey them across the sea in 
seven small ships. 

“ God hath heard our prayer ! ” “ God hath 

heard our prayer ! ” A cry of joy arose from 
the harbor. Stephen, his beauty freshened by 
joy and hope, pointed to seven small ships 
riding at anchor on the shining blue waves. 

All was haste and confusion. Pierre and 
Alise hastened to the sea. 


THE WAY. 


119 


Now would the Lady Bertrade appear. Of 
that they were certain. 

Suddenly Pierre felt a pluck at his tunic. 
Turning, he discovered a boy of about his own 
age, wearing the cross — a queer-faced urchin 
who knotted up his features when he talked. 

“ Art Pierre of Cloyes ? ” he asked. ‘‘ Then 
would Stephen speak with thee — alone,” he 
added seeing that Alise was preparing to ac- 
company him. 

“ I will await thee here, Pierrelo,” she said, 
and took a seat on some stones. 

In vain did Pierre seek Stephen. 

“ The prophet is already on shipboard,” said 
a friar with a strange wild face. 

When Pierre returned to the stones Alise 
was gone. There were fresh footprints in the 
sand, among them those of a man, but they 
were soon crossed by others and gave no clew. 

“I will watch the children,” he thought, 
‘‘and, as they embark, I shall find her.” For 
he thought that it was probable that she had 
gone in pursuit of him or her mother. 

When he failed to find her, he sought Brother 


120 


THE LITTLE CRUSADERS. 


Sylvestre. The good brother hastily explained 
that he must leave on one of the ships. His 
vow was of obedience and the order was for 
him to seek Italy at once. 

“ I have sent for my brother in the flesh,” 
he said. “ He sojourneth in a castle near by 
and he will come and help thee. Wait, my 
boy, at the monastery, until he comes, and God 
bless thee for a true little soldier of the cross. 
Thou art giving up thy desires to see Jeru- 
salem to succor thy friends, and God will never 
desert thee.” 

Then, though he was a friar, he stooped and 
swept back the curls from Pierre’s brow and 
kissed him. 

“ I would have loved thee for mine own son, 
child,” he said, and blessed him, remembering 
his office. 


CHAPTEE XI. 


THE SAILING OF THE SHIPS. 

While Pierre had been seeking Alise, the 
crusaders had been making ready to depart. 

The whole shore was alive with joyous chil- 
dren. Banners were flying, crosses were up- 
lifted, voices were raised in song. 

Huofo Ferreus and William Porcus, the mer- 
chants who were to furnish the ships, were 
close at hand, and out poured the people of 
Marseilles, women in working kirtles, ladies in 
wimples and couvre-chefs, in rich tunics and bro- 
caded mantles, portly merchants with peaked 
beards and pointed caps, shipbuilders and ship- 
owners, monks, friars, an abbess, priests, beg- 
gars, gamins, even the mighty bishop in splen- 
did dalmatic and mitre. 

Could the old houses of Marseilles have 
spoken, the little crusaders never would have 

sailed. 

121 


122 THE LITTLE CRUSADERS. 

“ Go back, children, go back,” they would 
have cried. “We saw an army braver than 
thine sail away. It ^filled one hundred and 
fifty great ships. W e saw armor gleam, swords 
flash, banners wave. We heard chants, and we 
saw that army start forth and the Holy Land 
became not theirs. 

“ Go back, little children, go back ! ” 

But those old sea-worn houses could not 
speak, and the children, rejoicing in their for- 
tune, and fearing no evil, began to embark in 
confident joy. They were rowed to the ships 
in skiffs, and Pierre watched each one to see 
that Alise did not escape him, though in his 
heart he knew she would never leave without 
him. At last all were on board and a cheer 
rang from the shore. 

The captains declared the vessels to be safe, 
and ready for the voyage. The sailors grasped 
the ropes, and the anchor chains were un- 
loosed. 

For a moment all was still. Like the sea- 
gulls poising over the crests of the waves they 
love, dripping, rising, the white-sailed vessels 


THE SAILING OF THE SHIPS. 123 

rode on the waves and seemed to dance in the 
sunlight which fell on the thousands of red 
crosses, and blinding the eyes of the quaintly 
dressed crowd on the shore, lit up the gloomy 
old houses behind them. 

“ Veni Creator Spiritus I ” 

“ Come. Holy Ghost, our souls inspire ! ” 

The priests began the hymn to whose music 
all ships were accustomed to embark in the 
days of the Church. Five thousand little voices 
took up the strain ; and then, “ In the name of 
God,” the sailors set the sails ; the anchors 
were raised ; and to the sound of the solemn old 
chant the remnant of the army of the little 
crusaders moved out the old harbor of Mar- 
seilles on its way to Jerusalem. 

“ Teach me to know the Father, Son, 

And thee of both to be but One, 

That, through the ages all along, 

This may be our unending song.” 

And Pierre, shading his eyes from the glare, 
saw the little fleet pass the great rock of ISTotre 
Dame dela Garde whereon stood the chapel of 
the sailors, and a merchant near by told him 


124 : THE LITTLE CRUSADERS. 

that the ships were out the harbor and riding 
the waves of the sea. 

When the crowd could see and hear no more 
they returned to their homes. 

Pierre felt very lost and forlorn, alone in a 
strange city, with the army gone, and with it 
Stephen, his beautiful Stephen. It hurt him 
that his old-time friend had gone without a 
word, and the conflict was strong in him again. 

Which was the true way to serve God ? 

He had wanted to go in the ships, and a man 
on the beach had twitted him with being a 
crusader who had deserted his ranks. 

It was hard, but then Brother Sylvestre had 
told him that the way of the cross was the way 
of pain and giving up, and that friendship was 
dearer than crusading. 

At the monastery he found a grand lord. 
He was brave and handsome, just the man 
whom Pierre craved for a father, and he patted 
the boy on the head. 

“ Good-morrow, little knight,” he said. “ My 
good brother hath writ me of thy truth to thy 
lady. Ho wonder he loveth thee so,” he 


THE SAILING OF THE SHIPS. 125 

added under his breath. “ Thou art a pretty 
sprig of a lad.” 

“ And one who looketh strangely like thee,” 
said a brother who had entered the room. 

The stranger shrugged his shoulders. 

“ Flatter me not, good brother,” he said with 
a laugh. “ As for kin, if you mean that, my 
brother and I are alone in the world. Near 
kin have we none. The resemblance thou seest, 
— and on my faith, I think thou art right, — is 
but of chance. But come, my little knight, we 
must be about our search, for the child is sweet, 
and the lady fair, and their castle yearneth 
greatly for their coming.” 

The two made their way into the city. 

“ Lodgings we must have,” said the lord. 

They found accommodations after some 
search, and there took up their abode. 

The brother of the Franciscan left Pierre 
presently on some business of his own. When 
he returned he found the little crusader fast 
asleep on the broad window sill, his sturdy little 
legs dangling against the black wood of the 
wainscoting. 


126 THE LITTLE CRUSADERS. 

His head had fallen upon his doubled-up arm 
on the sill, and on the face there was a baby look 
which sent a lump into the throat of the knight, 
who remembered the thirty thousand such as 
this who had started forth to J erusalem. 

Suddenly he started. 

The child’s tunic had fallen open at the neck, 
and lying against the warm whiteness of the 
little throat was a chain of strange workman- 
ship. The knight looked at it closer, then 
studied the boy’s face. 

Something in the curve of the mouth made 
his face grow sad, as if at the awakening of 
some stifled memory. 

“ Who is this child ? ” he asked aloud. “ ’Tis 
writ in the letter that he is but a peasant of 
Cloyes, but, on my faith, that boy has better 
blood than Cloyes in his veins. The child was 
a boy. Could it ” 

Pierre started, moved slowly, then stretched 
himself, and opened his eyes. When he saw 
the knight he sprang lightly to the floor. 

“Pardon, messire,” he said, and hastily 
brought from a cupboard a cake of oats and 


THE SAILING OF THE SHIPS. 127 

bran, a pasty of fowl, sweetmeats, and a bottle 
of wine. Then he waited upon the knight, 
seeing that he had his fill. 

When the knight had made an end of eating 
Pierre partook of what was left. When he 
\vas satisfied he placed the remnants of the 
feast in the cupboard. 

“ Come hither, boy,” commanded the knight. 
“ I would ask thee some questions. How earnest 
thou by that chain ? ” 

At that moment there entered the knight’s 
little page. 

He bowed low on one knee, his pretty cap 
in his hand. 

“ Messire,” he said, ‘‘ a lady seeketh good 
Brother Sylvestre at the monastery, and they 
have sent thither for thee.” 

In haste the knight bade Pierre to follow 
him. 

“ Who knows ? ” he asked. “ It may be the 
Lady Bertrade.” And in the excitement the 
chain was forgotten. 


CHAPTER XII. 


WHAT HAPPENED TO ALISE. 

And Alise ? 

What had become of the little lady of 
Cloyes after Pierre left her to find Stephen ? 

Sitting there on the rocks, thinking anxiously 
of her mother, she was startled by a touch on 
her shoulder. 

Turning, she looked up into the face of the 
woman who had brought the message which 
had alarmed Brother Sylvestre. 

‘‘ How now, little lady ? ’’ she said. “ Thy 
mother awaits thee in the streets of Mar- 
seilles.” 

Alise gave a quick cry of joy. 

Then she paused a moment before she spoke, 
remembering how Brother Sylvestre had 
warned her against this woman. 

“ How knowest thou of my mother ? ” She 
128 


WHAT HAPPENED TO ALISE. 129 

asked. “ But go thou, and bid her seek me here, 
for Pierrelo will return, and were I gone he 
would not know where to find me.” 

“ But no, little lady,” and the woman’s tones 
were soft and persuasive, “ thy mother bade me 
bring thee to her. Come.” 

Alise hesitated. 

It might be that her mother had sent the 
woman, but why ? She gave a quick glance at 
the ugly fat face, and in the narrow eyes she 
caught a cunning look ^vhich frightened her. 

“ I believe not that my mother sent thee,” 
she cried with sudden courage but with a 
tremble in every limb, “ and thou hast taken off 
thy cross. If thou art true, thou wilt wait with 
me for Pierre.” 

“ Bah ! but I will not, thou little marmotte,” 
cried the woman. The smile vanished from her 
face, and in its place came a look terrible to 
see, so full was it of greed, and malice, and 
wickedness. 

With her pudgy hand she gave a signal, and 
Alise felt herself caught from the rear, and be- 
fore she could think or speak she was being 
9 


130 THE LITTLE CRUSADERS. 

borne by a man through the streets of Mar- 
seilles. 

“ Help ! Let me go, let me go ! Pierre ! 
Pierre ! ” 

It was a child’s imploring cry, and a merchant 
stopped before the man and woman. 

“ ’Tis our little one who would run upon the 
crusade,” explained the man. “We seek to 
lock her up until the ships shall be gone. By 
the saints, good sir, if you have any, look to 
your children or you will lose them.” 

The explanation was sufficient, and Alise’s 
frantic talk passed unheeded. Were not chil- 
dren breaking all bonds to join the army ? 

The merchant went his way ; next paused a 
kind-faced woman. 

“’Tis strange,” she said to herself, “the 
child hath look of neither the man nor the 
woman.” 

But she had no proof that Alise was not 
their child, so she also went her way. 

In vain did Alise struggle to escape. 

The man held her fast, and he compelled 
her silence with dreadful threats. 


WHAT HAPPENED TO ALTSE. 131 

Presently he paused before a house overlook- 
ing the harbor. 

The woman knocked three times upon the 
door. It was opened from within by the boy 
who had brought the message to Pierre. 

Alise found herself borne down a long hall ; 
a door was unbarred ; she was given a thrust, 
and found herself in a high vaulted room full 
of girls of about her own age. Some were cry- 
ing, some were sulking, others, sitting listless 
and idle. 

By the wall in which were two high windows 
admitting the light, sat a girl of twelve or 
more. Her face was a rich olive, her hair 
wavy and dark, and long curling eyelashes 
swept her cheek. 

When she saw Alise she came forward, a 
gentle, pitying smile on her face. 

“ I am Isabelle of Brittany,” she said, and 
put her arm about Alise. “ Be not frightened. 
At least, while thou art here, nothing will hurt 
thee.” 

She drew her away to the place near the 
wall from whence she had come, and in answer 


132 THE LITTLE CRUSADERS. 

to Alise’s questions told her that the man and 
woman were slave-dealers, and that all the 
children before her were destined to be sold 
into foreign lands. 

And then a terrible thought turned Alise 
cold. 

The Old Man of the Mountain ! 

Isabelle shook her head. 

“ I know not,” she said. And then she told 
Alise of how every few days children were led 
from the room never to return. 

All night long the two girls clung to each 
other. Fright, grief, and terror of the coming 
morrow drove sleep from their eyes. 

It was a terrible thing. 

When one is ten, one needs her mother, and, 
poor little children, they had no hope of again 
seeing theirs. They had all been kidnapped, 
some by force, some by false messages, some 
by tempting promises. 

“It may be,” said Isabelle next morning, 
“ that we shall be sold to kind dealers. I have 
my plan. My father is a rich lord. I shall 
offer a ransom, and, perchance, the dealer will 


WHAT HAPPENED TO ALISE. 133 

send me to my father. If not ” — with a gentle 
hand she touched the cross on Alise’s breast — 
‘‘ He will keep us.” 

The words cheered Alise, and hope sprang 
up in her heart. 

Perhaps her mother 

But, alas, where was her mother ? 

The room was full of misery. 

Isabelle of Brittany alone was calm. Many 
of the children wept in noisy grief. Some 
were unresigned and pounded on the door. 

For breakfast the woman brought cakes of 
oat, honey, milk, and wine. She had no mind 
to starve the children. Such folly would pre- 
vent a good sale. Their misery had no effect 
on her cruel heart. She gave each child her 
portion, and when a pale-looking child begged 
for some air in the close room she gave her a 
cuff. 

Before she left, Alise crept to her side, all 
the gentle sweetness which people loved filling 
her face. 

She took the pudgy hand in hers. 

“Good dame,” she said, “if the wicked 


134 


THE LITTLE CRUSADERS. 


man will have thee sell us, wilt thou not let us 
go to a kind master ? ” 

The woman stared. 

“ Oh, good dame,” said little Alise, her 
mouth quivering, and her eyes filling, “ I am 
afeard, I am afeard. I want my mother. 
Take me to her, please, good dame ! Didst 
ever want thy mother ? ” 

“ Thou marmotte ! ” screamed the woman. 

In a moment she crept back to Isabelle of 
Brittany. 

Across her cheek were long red marks. 

Thou wert not wise,” said little Isabelle. 
“ But we all did it. ’Tis no use.” 

When the evening came, Isabelle told Alise 
that it was time for the Angelas. 

The two children knelt on the white earthen 
floor. 

The other children, seeing them, knelt too. 

When they had said the Hail Mary, Alise 
began the Our Father. 

“Pater Foster qui es in coelis,” and her 
little voice was so full of faith and hope that 
quiet came on the prisoners. 


WHAT HAPPENED TO ALISE. 135 

Surely God would keep them. 

As the days passed Alise’s gentleness began 
its work. 

She told the children of the vision and the 
journey. She smoothed over difficulties and 
passed from group to group like a little mes- 
senger of love. But within, her little heart 
was breaking. 

“ Mother, mother ! ” it beat from morn 
until night. 

Her beauty began to fade, and each day she 
felt that she must die from longing. 

“ Thou art all love,” said Isabelle. “ Thy 
heart, my little Alise, is so tender that »t would 
be barren soil for aught else.” 

There was no chance for escape. Isabelle 
had satisfied herself of that. A quaint little 
girl of Provence with a saucy face and ways 
like a boy, had climbed the window frame to 
seek out a way of escape by jumping, but she 
returned with the light gone from her eyes. 
There were heavy iron bars across the win- 
dows, and the distance to the ground was too 
great. 


136 THE LITTLE CRUSADERS. 

1^0, there was nothing to do. Never again 
would they see their parents. 

One day the woman led five from the room. 

Then a dull despair settled on them all. 

Whose turn would come next ? Foul as the 
room was with the presence of so many, any- 
thing was better than the slave dealers. 

One afternoon it came the time for Alise. 

“ Come,” the woman said, roughly seizing 
her, “none of that. Come ! ” For Alise was 
clinging in fright to Isabelle. 

She led her into a room wherein she washed 
her, and made her fine in a dress of blue slashed 
with white and all over with silver. She made 
smooth her soft hair and pinched her pale 
cheeks to a healthful pink. Then she led her 
into a great room where stood a merchant. 

Alise knew him by his high pointed cap, his 
peaked beard, and girdle about his waist. 

“ Here, good merchant, is the child,” and the 
woman thrust the miserable little lady of Cloyes 
well under his eyes. “ I have been saving her 
for one A1 Hassan of Alexandria, but he 
cometh not, and the child costeth to keep. If 


WHAT HAPPENED TO ALISE. 137 

thou wantest such a one — thou said’st fair hair 
and eyes of blue ? 

The merchant nodded. 

He, however, seemed unwilling to be pleased 
immediately. 

“ Have ye no others ? ” he asked studying 
Alise. 

The woman looked cross. 

“ The child is a rare one,” she said. 

They haggled long. 

At length the bargain was struck. 

“ I have not about me so much money,” said 
the merchant. “ Bring the child to me at sun- 
set, and thou shalt have the gold.” 

The woman agreeing, the merchant departed. 

That evening Alise found herself again on 
the streets of Marseilles. 

Presently they entered an old sea-worn 
house. 

Within they found the merchant. 

Suddenly Alise felt her heart leap with hope. 

Her new master greeted her with a smile. 

Perhaps he was not a bad man, and he would 
let her go for a ransom. 


138 THE LITTLE CRUSADERS. 

On the table lay the gold. With eager greed 
the woman gathered it up. She counted it, 
put it in a wallet, drew the string, and left. 

Then went Alise straight to the merchant. 

“ Messire,” she began, when to her surprise 
the peaked beard flew to one corner of the 
room, the high-crowned hat to another, and 
before Alise could speak she was fast in the 
arms of her own Count Raoul; her mother, 
her lost mother, was hurrying through the 
doorway, and behind her was Pierre, her good 
little Pierre, the crusader of Cloyes. 


CHAPTEK XIII. 


HOW PIERRE FOUND ALISE. 

When Alise had been petted and kissed and 
fed with dainties, they made her tell her story, 
and her mother shed tears, and Pierre clenched 
his fists, and the Count Paoul promised that 
the woman should be punished. 

“ I have been to the Bishop of Marseilles,’’ 
he said, “ to-morrow, he will visit the house. 
Yes, my sweet little Alise, thy Isabelle shall 
be rescued. I, myself, will leave money with a 
servant to take her to Brittany. Grieve no 
more, little one, thy troubles are ended.” 

Then Count Raoul proceeded to tell Alise 
the story of how they found her. 

“ It was this little knight,” he said, and he 
drew forward Pierre. 

To begin with, Alise must understand that 

Brother Svlvestre and her own Sieur Raoul 

139 


140 


THE LITTLE CRUSADERS. 


were brothers, and of how, being under the 
vow of obedience, the Franciscan — as after- 
wards the followers of him of Assisi came to be 
called — had despatched a messenger for his 
brother, who hastened to Marseilles to discover 
that the lost child and lady were his own 
friends of Cloyes. 

Then next must Alise hear of how Lady 
Bertrade had been trapped to the house by the 
road only to find herself a prisoner. To save 
herself from the slave-dealers she had offered a 
ransom of rich jewels sewed in her dress. 
Hastening to Marseilles, she had discovered 
through the old servitor at her kinsman’s house 
that little Pierre was at the monastery. Seek- 
ing him, she had found the good Kaoul. 

Alise crept closer to her mother and held 
her hand fast in hers while the Count talked 
on. 

He told of the mother’s grief at the loss of 
Alise, of the slow passage of days, and of 
Pierre’s refusal to give up the search. 

“We must find her,” he had cried. “And, 
by St. Martin of Tours, we will.” 


HOW PIERRE FOUND ALISE. 


141 


One morning, by chance, Pierre walked out 
from Marseilles. It was hot and the dust 
followed close at his heels. By and by he 
came upon a group of children resting under a 
tree. They were sullen and frightened-looking 
and none glanced up at his approach. 

With them was an evil-looking man. By a 
scar across his cheek, Pierre knew him for one 
whom he had seen in the cathedral at Marseilles. 

Suddenly Pierre’s heart gave a leap. Com- 
ing from behind the tree was the boy who had 
brought him the message from Stephen. His 
quick mind put two and two together. 

The man was a slave-dealer. 

The boy was his assistant. 

Doubtless, during his absence, they had 
kidnapped Alise. 

Pierre hastily concealed himself behind a 
tree and watched the group. To his disap- 
pointment they turned their faces westward 
and marched from Marseilles. After a little 
thought Pierre concluded not to follow them. 
He reasoned that they were on their way to 
deliver the children to some dealer. Doubtless, 


142 THE .LITTLE CRUSADERS. 

the man and boy would return alone, and so 
he must watch and follow them. 

Pierre was wild with hope, and refused to 
listen when the Sieur Paoul expressed a fear 
that Alise might have been taken from Mar- 
seilles in the beginning. He haunted the road, 
hiding himself in the lush grass of the meadows, 
and watched the daily processions of merchants, 
priests, pilgrims, women, and children. One 
day a woman paused at the tree under whose 
shade the children had rested. She was large 
and coarse-looking and she wore a dress of 
bright green, and hose of scarlet, and a gay 
breast-knot of the same shade. There was 
about her a look familiar to Pierre, and he 
puzzled his brain until he remembered her as 
the woman who had brought Alise the message 
from her mother. 

Full of excitement, Pierre waited. Just as 
the sun was setting a man in a cassock of deep 
red approached. The woman gave him a 
laugh of welcome, and as he turned his face 
Pierre recognized him by the scar. 

The rest was easy to guess. 


HOW PIERRE FOUND ALISE. 


143 


The Sieur Eaoul had purchased the dress of 
a merchant, and seeking the house to which 
Pierre had tracked the couple, offered a tempt- 
ing price for just the child he craved. 

“ And thou knowest how the plan succeeded,” 
he said, smiling at Alise. 

There was indeed much talking to be done, 
and next day Alise heard of the sailing of the 
army. 

“ And we shall never see the Holy Land,” 
she said in sadness. 

But Pierre was not so sorry. 

“ I should like to see my mother,” he said. 

The next day they left Marseilles, but not 
until Alise had seen Isabelle and bade her 
farewell. She was safe with the bishop who 
had sent a messenger to her people. 

This time the journey was not on foot. 
Even Pierre had a palfrey. 

One day the little boy was grieving that at 
Cloyes they must part. 

“ Thou shaft stay in the castle,” cried Alise. 

But Pierre shook his head. “I am a peas- 
ant,” he said. 


144 THE LITTLE CRUSADERS. 

‘‘ No, no, but thou art not,” exclaimed Alise. 
“Stephen told me of the finding of thee in 
the forest. Come, we will to the Sieur Raoul 
and thou shalt tell thy story. Perchance he 
can help thee find thy father.” 

When the Count heard the story his tanned 
face grew pale. 

He drew Pierre close to his side and kissed 
his brow. 

“ Her little son,” he said, and then bit hard 
on his lower lip. 

“ Let me see the chain about thy neck,” he 
said. 

In surprise Pierre unfastened it. 

The knight looked at it long and earnestly. 

“ When we reach Cloyes, my little Pierre,” 
he said, “ we will talk more of the matter.” 

“ Dost know my father ? ” cried Pierre, and 
the blood dyed his face even under his curls. 

“ Perchance, my boy,” answered the Count. 
“ Wait thou, and I will talk with Jacques and 
Marie.” 

With this the two children were forced to be 
content. As they galloped along the road, or 


HOW PIERRE FOUND ALISE. 145 

paused to rest in some shady spot, they talked 
a vast amount about the whole affair, and 
Alise pictured Pierre’s father as some famous 
knight in shining armor who would dress his 
son in velvets and teach him to bear arms. 

“ And give me a falcon ” put in Pierre, whose 
eye was upon a heron then rising from a stream 
on the edge of a meadow. 

The journey home was very different from 
the march to the sea. Count Kaoul told them 
much concerning the ruins in Provence, and 
Lady Bertrade permitted them to pause and 
play in the fields and gather poppies, and fill 
their hands with great bouquets of bouton d’or, 
or chase butterflies through the green mead- 
ows. 

Everything was done to make Alise forget 
her cruel imprisonment, and in time the color 
returned to her cheeks, and she no longer 
jumped and started when spoken to. “ I am so 
happy she would say, kissing her mother on 
hand or cheek. 

At length they reached Cloyes. 

The Lady Bertrade was for having Pierre 

lO 


146 THE LITTLE CRUSADERS. 

sojourn in the castle. She felt that never could 
she do enough for him since he had found her 
Alise. 

But the boy was determined. “ I must go 
to my mother,” he said. 

’Twas evening, and the sun was setting in a 
rosy glow. 

As Pierre entered the village all was the 
same, save only that not even a single child 
was heard in the street. From the meadows 
came no sound of their voices, and the shep- 
herds slowly trudging behind their flocks were 
all grown men. There was not a single boy in 
Cloyes. 

Pierre passed Andre in his cage. Presently 
he caught sight of old Jeanne driving home her 
goat. The Loir still flowed on like a silver 
cord, and when Pierre paused before his home 
in the meadow his ears were full of the lowing 
of milk-laden cattle, of the buzz of bees seeking 
the straw-bound hives behind the house, of the 
flow of water over the stones, and he forgot 
the songs of the crusaders, and the sea no longer 
sounded in his ears. He was a little boy glad 


HOW PIERRE FOUND ALISE. 147 

to be home again after his wanderings, and now 
he understood his duty, and he knew that God 
came not in that vision to Stephen, but rather in 
the homely one of every-day life and love. We 
all learn the lesson,sooner or later, when our seas 
refuse to dry a path between us and our desires, 
and the cruel waves beat on at our feet as they 
did at those of the little crusaders, and happy 
for Pierre was it that he learned it young. 

As old Frangois, driving two oxen,came down 
the road, Pierre went in, and Marie got him 
in her arms, and her tears were on his cheek, 
and her heart flowed over with love for her 
little lamb who had strayed, and Jacques 
came in and he wept over him too, and Pierre 
told them of how he had missed them, and 
of how wrong he had been to go, and they 
petted him, and forgot all about his sin in 
leaving them, for this is the work of love, and 
it is far nobler and holier than crusading. 


CHAPTEE XIY. 


piekre’s father. 

On the day following Pierre’s return came the 
Sieur Eaoul, and he must needs hear all about 
the finding of Pierre, and see the jewels, and 
examine the clothes of the babj^. 

When he had made an end of seeing and 
learning he told them a story. 

‘‘ Long years ago,” he began, “ there were 
two brothers, and they loved each other very 
tenderly, and naught had ever come between 
them. But one day the elder of the two won 
the day at a tournament, and he laid his trophy 
at the feet of a beautiful slim young girl with 
a white face and golden hair, clad in white and 
gold, one whom the knights called the ‘ Lily 
of Provence,’ since in that land of flowers was 
she born. 

“He loved this lady with all his heart, and he 

felt that never would he love another so well. 

148 


PIERRE’S FATHER. 


149 


When he spake of his love to his brother, in 
return the younger told him of his own love for 
a beautiful girl whom he had saved in the hunt 
from the antlers of a great buck which was 
hard upon her. 

“ Each brother rejoiced in the love of the 
other, and one day the younger journeyed away 
for his bride. 

“ ‘ She is in Brittany,’ he said, ‘ at the castle 
of her uncle.’ 

“ When he came again to his home he had 
with him his wife, and it was the fair, Lily of 
Provence.’ 

‘‘Then the elder, with his lips shut hard 
through love for his brother, went on a journey 
to Jerusalem, trying in his travels to forget his 
sorrow. 

“ When calmness came, and he returned to 
share in the joy, he found his brother vanished 
from the castle. 

“ An old retainer whose beard came white to 
his waist told him the story. Once when his 
master had been absent from the castle a sum- 
mons had come for the lady to hasten to her 


150 THE LITTLE CRUSADERS. 

uncle in Brittany. The old lord was dying and 
would see her again before he closed his eyes 
forever. 

“ She started forth with her little babe and a 
guard of retainers. She visited her uncle, and 
was on her return when she was torn to pieces 
by wild beasts in the forest. So it was sup- 
posed, though no one ever knew the certainty 
of it, since none of the little party ever was 
seen again. 

“ The husband of the lady was so heart- 
broken with grief that he was like a man with- 
out mind. But presently he conquered himself 
and took the resolution of joining some order in 
the church. He journeyed away to Italy, and 
presently made friends with Francis of Assisi, 
and listening to his plans for an order vowed 
to poverty, he decided to become one of his 
followers. 

So, ray little Pierre/’ said the Sieur Kaoul 
turning to the boy, “ the look in thy face, indeed, 
told a true story, and now by these jewels and 
by that chain which a goldsmith made at my 
order I know that thy mother was the, Lily of 


Pierre’s father. 


151 


Provence, ’and that thy father is my one dear 
brother, and that thou art my own little 
nephew.” 

Then he drew Pierre to his arms, and kissed 
him very tenderly, but as for Pierre his brain 
was all in a whirl. He had indeed found his 
father on the crusade, but not a brave knio^ht 
with waving plumes and flashing armor, but a 
poor Franciscan brother whose robe was frayed 
at the edges, and who begged his food from 
door to door. 

Pierre was not twelve years old, and the 
disappointment was keen. 

He turned towards Alise to find her eyes full 
of tears, her lips a-tremble. 

“ Oh, Pierrelo ! ” she cried, “ what a sorrow 
that Brother Sylvestre should be gone, and not 
know thee for his son. Sieur Raoul, my mother 
used to marvel that thy brother should care so 
much for a boy not his own, but now ’tis clear.” 

Then Pierre’s heart was filled with tender- 
ness, and he remembered the talks with his 
father, and the story of the birds. “Wilt tell 
me more of my father and my mother ? ” he 


152 


THE LITTLE CRUSADERS. 


asked, timidly adding — “ ray uncle ? ” — with a 
manly bashfulness which won Sieur EaouFs 
heart. 

When Count Eaoul left Cloyes, with him 
went Pierre. In vain they entreated Jacques 
and Marie to accompany them. The old man 
shook his head. “ Ho, messire, no ; old trees 
root not in new soil. I would miss my sheep, 
and the river, and long for the hills, and for 
Frangoisand Henri. We were boys together, 
messire. There is much to talk over.’’ 

With Marie it was a struggle. 

“ I love the lad,” she said, and held him close, 
“ but, messire, first with a woman is her man, 
and it pleaseth mine to abide in Cloyes.” 

But there was a longing look in her eyes, and 
a feeling in her breast which cried out against 
giving up her boy, but again Love conquered, 
and she put her wrinkled hand on Jacques’ 
shoulder and let Pierre go. 

“ I will come soon again,” said the Count, 
and he gave them gold with which to purchase 
sheep, and what they would. 

In Count Eaoul’s castle Pierre was trained in 


PIERRE’S FATHER. 


163 


knightly sports, and as the years passed he grew 
brave and strong. He had not one, but many 
falcons, and dire was his slaying of the herons. 

Each year he journeyed to see Jacques and 
Marie, and he never outgrew his love of the 
little house in the meadow. 

Nor did he forget the lessons his father had 
taught him of the true way of the cross, and 
when he kept the vigil of arms in the church 
on the night before he took his knightly vows, 
“ fasting and praying and lonely watching,” he 
made faith with himself that he was to be ever 
the knight of Love, suffering long and being 
kind, “ envying not, vaunting not himself, seek- 
ing not his own, thinking no evil, bearing all 
things, believing all things, hoping all things, 
enduring all things.” 

And when he had won his spurs he rode away 
to Cloyes, and asked the Lady Bertrade for the 
hand of Alise. 

It was his only grief that no news had ever 
come of his father. Nothing had been heard 
of the seven ships from the day of their sailing. 

“ Thou art my son,” said the Sieur Kaoul, 


154 : THE LITTLE CRUSADERS. 

who never had married because of his love for 
the Lily of Provence. 

When Alise became the wife of Pierre it was 
agreed that they stay half the year with the 
Count and the other in the chateau at Cloyes. 

Over the doorway of each castle Alise had 
placed a cross and its color was red. 

“ Our vow is still upon us,” she said, “ though 
we need not seek the Holy Land to honor our 
Lord.” 


CHAPTEE XY. 


THE LITTLE CRUSADEES. 

Eighteen years had passed since Stephen saw 
his vision on the hills. 

In all that time no news had come of the 
little army which had sailed on the seven ships. 
Alise in the long winter evenings was wont to 
gather her little ones about her knee and tell 
them of how their father, their grandmother, 
and their mother had set forth on the march 
to Jerusalem, and the children wondered and 
asked if she had not been frightened, and why 
God had not dried up the sea when He had 
said faith would conquer. 

‘‘ Because,” answered Alise, “ there was dis- 
obedience, and the having of our own ways, 
and the hurting of parents back of it all. We 
sought glory, and honor, and crowns, and we 
forgot that Love is the only way, and it could 

not have made children so willing to be brave 
155 


156 


THE LITTLE CRUSADERS. 


at the cost of hurting. The vision was not of 
God, though Stephen believed it.” 

It happened one night that all were gathered 
in the hall of the castle at Cloyes. It was 
raging without, and the wind howled about the 
castle as it had on the night when Matilde had 
told the story of the Old Man of the Mountain. 

There was a trouvere staying over night in 
the castle, and Pierre, from the dais, com- 
manded that he sing. 

To the surprise of all, his fingers strayed for 
a moment about the strings of his lute, and 
then he sang the crusade of the children. 

Eyes filled with tears as he told of the baby 
army and its banners, and the homes left desr 
olate of children. 

“ Grief taketh the place of joy in homes, and many 
knells are tolled. 

Mothers, like Rachel, mourn the young whom Death’s 
cold arms enfold.” 

As he sang there was a knocking at the castle 
gate, and when the warder had raised the port- 
cullis and let down the drawbridge, there 
entered a stranger in the dress of a priest. 


THE LITTLE CRUSADERS. 157 

His hair was gray, and his eyes were sad. 
Water streamed from his clothes, and he looked 
foot-sore and weary. 

“ Welcome, holy man,” cried Pierre. 

“ W elcome,” cried Alise, and stepping from 
the dais she led the newcomer close to the 
blaze of the great fire in the hall. 

Then she ordered food and drink, and saw 
that the stranger was comfortable. 

Presently, when he had satisfied his wants, 
he drew near the dais, and Pierre wondered 
that there was something familiar about his 
look. 

He would not seat himself, but stood erect 
like one who hath a message. 

‘‘ Is there any in this castle,” he asked, “ who 
would know the fate of the boys and girls who 
sought Jerusalem with Stephen of Cloyes. I 
journey through France bearing news to the 
mothers and fathers, who for eighteen long 
years have heard naught of their children.” 

“ And who art thou ? ” cried Pierre all of a 
tremble. 

But Alise alread}^ had reached the stranger. 


158 THE LITTLE CRUSADERS. 

“ Thou art Brother Sylvestre,” she cried, 
holding out her hands “ and I am Alise, and 
this is Pierre.” 

And then she remembered that Pierre had 
at last met his father. 

It was she who told the story and, in the 
wonder of it all, the crusade of the children 
was forgotten. 

But the next day he told them the story of 
how the ships had sailed safely until a fearful 
storm arose. It lashed the waves to fury, and 
two of the- ships went to pieces at the foot of 
a grea't rock known as that of the Hermit. 

“Well, indeed,” he said, and his voice was 
low and sad, “ had the five also struck the rock. 
Happy, indeed, was the fate of the little cru- 
saders who went down in the waves to that of 
those left in the ships.” 

Hugo Ferreus and William Porcus, explained 
Brother Sylvestre, were not true merchants, 
but slave-dealers who had enticed the children 
away that they might sell them to the Mos- 
lems. For this cruel purpose alone had they 
furnished the ships to the crusaders. Then 


THE LITTLE CRUSADERS. 159 

Brother Sylvestre told of the terror of the 
children at being sold into slavery, for well 
they knew the horrors of it. 

Part of the crusaders were carried to Alex- 
andria, part to Bujeiah, and Brother Sylvestre 
alone ever again saw France. Some were 
bought by Maschemuth, the governor of Alex- 
andria, and cruel indeed was their lot, for he 
was a hard taskmaster. 

Others were carried to Bagdad into the Holy 
Land, and on past Jerusalem to the regions 
about the Tigris. 

And they alone of all that vast army ever 
saw the Holy City. They had come indeed to 
Jerusalem, but they were hurried on, and sold 
into captivity. 

‘‘ The shame of it ! ” cried Alise, and her 
face flushed as it had on that long-gone day at 
Cloyes when she had reproved the children. 

But Brother Sylvestre raised his hand. 

‘‘ Daughter,” he said, “ question not the ways 
of God.” 

And then he told of how he had heard from 
those who traveled from the East, of how 


160 


THE LITTLE CRUSADERS. 


eighteen little crusaders had been martyred in 
Bagdad rather than deny their Lord. As for 
Brother Sylvestre himself, he had been the 
slave of Malek Kamel, the Sultan of Egypt, 
and his captivity had been easy. His owner 
at last had liberated him, and he had hastened 
to France, and now was journeying from 
hamlet to city, with the news of the children. 

And then he told a wonderful thing. 

He said that the travelers had told him, no 
matter how much the persecution, how cruel 
the tortures, not one of the little crusaders had 
given up his Lord. He thanked God, and when 
Pierre complained of the hardness of the fate of 
the little crusaders, he answered slowly : 

“‘Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings 
thou hast ordained strength because of thine 
enemies, that thou mightest still the Enemy 
and the Avenger.’ Yerily, my children, so 
long as the world shall last these children and 
their faithfulness shall show the power of 
Christ.” 

“ And Stephen ? ” It was Pierre who asked. 

Of the leader of the children. Brother SyL 


THE LITTLE CRUSADERS. 161 

vestre knew nothing. Pierre longed to hear of 
his old playfellow, but never was he to know 
if Stephen sailed on the ships, was lost on 
Hermit’s Kock, or if he lived in captivity in 
some heathen land. Like a flash of beau- 
tiful light the boy had appeared and vanished. 
Alise loved to believe that he — her beautiful 
Stephen, Stephen who saw the vision — was one 
of those whose feet stood within the walls of 
Jerusalem. 

After a little, Brother Sylvestre went his 
way, promising to return to his new-found 
children later. 

But his vow forbade his lingering. In pov- 
erty must he go his way, being of the order of 
St. Francis. 

As he journeyed, bearing his news, the heart 
of many a mother gladdened with the hope 
that her boy or girl might be liberated and 
return home again. 

But the hope was in vain. Never were the 
feet of even one of these little children to press 
again the soil of France. 

Years afterward, Pierre and Alise learned 

II 


162 THE LITTLE CRUSADERS. 

that the wicked merchants, Ferreus and Porcus, 
in company with three Saracens, were hanged 
on one gallows for attempting to capture the 
Emperor Frederick of Germany. 

So ended the Children’s Crusade on earth. 
But, after many long and weary days, their 
tired feet stand within the walls of Jerusalem — 
not within the walls of that old city of the He- 
brew, — but within the walls of the new Jerusa- 
lem, — those walls made of the twelve stones, 
— the first of jasper ; the second, sapphire ; the 
third, a chalcedony ; the twelfth, an amethyst.” 

For, as Brother Sylvestre told Pierre on the 
road to Marseilles, the way of the Cross is the 
way of sorrow, and the crown is the reward 
thereof, and the law of it all, and the end of it 
all, and the vision, and the command, is Love, 
and he who would do the will must obey the 
law, wearing the cross and walking in the way, 
and the Word shall never fail him. 


THE END. 







I 





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